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I think it would be useful if links to other Stack Overflow (and possibly Exchange network) questions and answers automatically had anchor text added to them, if the user doesn't add any themselves, in both posts and comments.

To illustrate, here is a link that a user posted as a comment:

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Wouldn't it be better, both for user experience as well as SEO, if the anchor text for that link was automatically set to this?:

See also How do I reword the very first git commit message?

For posts, another benefit would be that there would be less need to revise them to add anchor text to links that have no anchor text.

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  • Actually, now that I think about it, why not make this apply to links to aother sites as well (that don't already have user entered anchor text)?
    – user163250
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:17
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    We don't do this for technical reasons - looking up that text is expensive to do on-render (crazy expensive). If we looked it up on insert (also expensive, it's possibly an API call to another site), it would throw off the comment length limit and checks.
    – Nick Craver Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:17
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    See also: Userscript to auto-replace SOFU links in comments?
    – Tim Stone
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:26
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    This functionality exists somewhat for comments, when users vote to close questions. Would a dialog for users to enter related links be a better implementation?
    – user163250
    Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 23:33
  • I mean when users vote to close questions as duplicates.
    – user163250
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 0:00

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