* It's only 10 char and much too short for someone to click when it's inline with other links. Let's not mention text squirming around the screen via molasses JS, kicking your text up, down, and around the screen for several seconds before those short 10 chars finally become stationary.

* With high resolution touch screens, you're maybe 80% accurate on actually clicking right there. Again, my accuracy is my fat finger, and nearby links are just UI landmines.

With that singular idea in mind, everything else falls into place naturally.

`contributed Sep 2001 by Aaron Swartz`

Wild to see how much this person contributed to the open web we use today. I think the most notable example was RSS? It’s a shame that rss feeds have been nuked from existence.

There's also SEO benefits here as well because the more descriptive text helps search engines understand what search keywords might be relevant for the page being linked to.

So who is w3 to say how people should and shouldn't use links? All that I see are just opinions, with no objective metrics/theories to back up their recommendations.

W3 should be in the business of setting up technical standards that go through rigorous processes, not creating nonsense like this.

For example, you have a page about... unemployment benefits. It has some body text that contains hyperlinks to other pages of the website, but at the end is has standalone paragraphs that say, "Click here to check your eligibility and apply online" and "Click here to log into the benefits portal". "Click here" identifies the things you are the most likely to do if you visit this page. This is much easier than scanning the body text for "the _residents_ of the _state_ can _apply online_ to sign up for unemployment benefits".

It's not the best option, an even better option it to pull out all "action" links into a separate panel, so it is typographically distinct from the rest of the page. Then the links can just say "check your eligibility and apply for benefits" and "log into the benefits portal".

People don't read websites linearly, in the best case they skim read all the buttons and links. I personally would include the verb as it gives important context and is a clearer CTA for the "skimmers".

Amaya is W3C's... "Download Amaya"!