He's talking about lack of visual indication, and i agree. I'd like to see some sort of minimalist visual indicator that a custom hyperlink has been included.
edit: ...by "some sort of minimalist visual indicator..." I mean Prior to and Without Hovering.
Mission critical hover states are bad; unless of course you're trying to be slick and stealthy about links, and deliberately trying to make links less obvious to the uninitiated, behind which i could see some valid reasoning... although the styling can be bypassed pretty easily by anyone who knows what they're doing, and wants to get a sampling of what types of links the site's users are posting. (we could get into the whole "security by obscurity is not security" and "security by design is the only way" thing... but honestly, it's not my site, and it's kinda none of my business lol).
But as a general rule, it's
usually a bad idea, in website design, to make anything
important rely on hovering... but maybe links posted in user comments, aren't included in the realm of "important." Or alternatively, maybe it's intentional, in that it's important enough to give a slight barrier and/or delay, through "hiding in plain sight," those user-posted links... because people link all kinds of crazy stuff, and maybe it's better to be less obvious about it. But i don't think "being less obvious" is a significantly effective security measure, so who knows.
However, i do tend to like that the site makes the link for you, just by pasting in a url. Minimizing/Eliminating technical knowledge requirements, tends to be good for broader usability. Most people probably don't know HTML/CSS/BBcode... and some who do, might prefer to not have to use it unless it's necessary. However, ease of use typically has an associated cost, so there's that.
I would say the current situation is less than ideal, but it's really not a problem for me; probably good enough for most of us; creative formatting of posts is an easy enough interim solution, IMO.
