Rewriting "local" URLs automatically

Question

I think that URLs like https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31776/why-do-we-tag-questions could be automatically rewritten by Stack Overflow and other sites into a nicer form. It could be something like:

• MSO: Why do we tag questions?, or
• Meta Stackoverflow #31776, or even for the answers:
• MSO: "Why do we tag questions?" Smurfsnorting Farfulburger's answer

Currently when people post links to other questions, the links are simply not very clear. It's even worse if someone uses the whole link in the comment field.

If anyone supplies a custom text, it should be left there of course - I only mean rewriting for bare URLs.

Answer 1

As mentioned in this answer from November 2010:

For intra-site links (like, SO -> SO) this is now supported.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/49424/stack-exchange-sandbox

becomes*

Introducing the Stack Exchange Data Explorer aka SEDE

Like with tag rewrites this is done on post submission and is not currently reflected in the editor preview. It will always insert the current title into the post, at post creation time. However, should the title subsequently change it will not be updated unless the post is edited.

_{*Note that although the old title of the question is in the link, the new one is inserted.}