Should there be a guideline to inline URLs?

Question

One of the most common edits I make is to turn ugly URLs into clean textual references.

For example:

https://www.google.com.au/webhp?ie=UTF-8#safe=off&hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=URL+readability&oq=URL+readability

becomes

Google search for URL readability.

While there is debate about how understandable URLs are to modern readers, this to me is a basic part of web-page writing style to keep things readable - it is as important as putting a capital letter at the start of a sentence.

In an attempt to make more people get this right the first time, I propose adding it at the bottom of the current FAQ question on Meta.Skeptics.SE.

Answers below are proposed texts. Please consider posting your own version, and vote on your favourite.

Answer 1

URLs should be embedded in meaningful text links.

Rather than including a unreadable URL straight in the text, it should be made as a link behind some meaningful text.

Here an example of one simple way to do that:

[Daily Times news article](http://dailytimes.co.uk/news?dbid=76dsf78sd6fdf76fasdfd8hsdasdf)

Answer 2

I have been editing questions and answer to add proper descriptions of link, and generally do it in my questions/answers as well.

I do think it should be the standard, not only are full links VERY long at times, but also doesn't explain what it links to, sometimes it does but it's not standard.

Similarly if you link to a picture, you should download and put it up on SE instead. That should be the standard, since if you link to a picture, it might disappear.

Answer 3

The FAQ should NOT contain such an injunction.

I am putting this community wiki answer here, so I can tell if I am pushing something on the community they don't actually want. Some reasons might include: you prefer to see the raw URLs, the FAQ entry is not a style guide, it isn't a big enough problem to warrant an entry, or others - feel free to comment.