What is general policy for links in posts and edited posts

Question

I have recently gained the privilege of reviewing edits and since then I have reviewed over 100 of them.

I often see edits which do one thing which is they modify links like this:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Thread.html

into:

thread javadoc or even simply Thread.

What's more interesting is that I have reviewed an edit which did exactly the opposite, claiming that this version is more print-friendly.

I noticed that stackoverflow links get autoformatted very nicely, so at least there's no problem here. Like this: What is the etiquette for modifying posts?

Here are my two questions:

1. How should we post links in our questsions/answers?

2. How should we review edits which modify links to either version?

I usually try to use common sense to determine the readability of the link description or link itself. But sometimes I am uncertain what should be done.

Answer 1

Personally I think that links that are contained within continuous text should display a meaningful title instead of the whole URL. That way the link does not impair reading fluency:

As you can see in the Java documentation for Threads, you should handle [...]

When the link is added for reference only in a bullet point list or after a colon at the end of an answer, displaying the plain URL is better, because then the reader immediately sees the referenced documents and can decide which one suits best without having to pick the URLs hidden behind display texts first:

For further information have a look at the Java documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Thread.html

In addition to the criteria mentioned above I usually reject a suggested edit as too minor when the only things it changes are the display text of links.

NB: I don't think there's need for the links to be printer-friendly - for to visit them you will need to be online anyway...