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This well-sourced answer in its current form (revision 4) has several numerical values and block-quoted snippets. All are cited using an ancient Earth custom known as "footnoting", which is okay, people do bibliographize SE posts.

The problem is that for each of the bits of information, you need to memorize the foot note number, then scroll down to the bottom of the post, find that footnote number again, then click on the hyperlink from there.

Question: What is the utility of moving the hyperlink for a bit of information as far from the information as conceivably possible?

Is there a better way to preserve Earth's ancient pre-internet customs while making the hyperlinks as easily clicked as possible for modern viewers, including those reading on phones? Much of the world sees the internet on phones.

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Revision 5 of that answer is what I came up with as a solution. Comments?

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  • $\begingroup$ +(n!)² That looks great! Best of both worlds. You get an n-factorial up vote, my "highest honor" ;-) then I've squared it for getting rid of the strikethroughs as well. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jan 1 at 1:56
  • $\begingroup$ @uhoh This is trickier though $\endgroup$ – Alex Hajnal Jan 1 at 1:58
  • $\begingroup$ Yea, those were a bit clumsy. $\endgroup$ – Alex Hajnal Jan 1 at 1:59
  • $\begingroup$ Your trickier example with mostly doi's may involve a lot of paywalling and most readers can't view those, so after a few tries they may just give up clicking altogether. Assuming that is the case, then perhaps the way you've done it there is the better way for the typical reader. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jan 1 at 2:02
  • $\begingroup$ Pretty much all my paper links are to gratis PDFs. The rare paywalled ones are marked as such: "(Abstract; no freely-available version)" $\endgroup$ – Alex Hajnal Jan 1 at 2:05
  • $\begingroup$ Well, the first sentence of my question asks about "numerical values and block-quoted snippets." Your footnoting there is the traditional kind, where you state information in your own words, and footnote to show the sources you've used to arrive at those statements. Here I'm asking about something very different, so I don't think there is much overlap. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jan 1 at 2:09
  • $\begingroup$ Also, if there's a gratis version of a paywalled paper I'll link to the gratis one (e.g. on arXiv). Google Scholar is a useful tool for finding these PDFs. Here's an example Clicking on the paper's title goes to the paywall while clicking on the "[PDF]" link goes to a gratis PDF (a preprint in this case). Sometimes there are gratis PDFs hidden under the "All n versions" link as well. $\endgroup$ – Alex Hajnal Jan 1 at 2:20
  • $\begingroup$ That is pretty useful information, you might consider adding that to your answer post here at least. Comments should be considered temporary; they can be "cleaned up" at any time, though it's rare for particularly useful comments. $\endgroup$ – uhoh Jan 1 at 2:23

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