I’ve been pointing for years to the fundamental rhetorical problem of wikis — that making the link target and the link label the same, as Ward’s Wiki did, moves

I’ve been pointing for years to the fundamental rhetorical problem of wikis — that making the link target and the link label the same, as Ward’s Wiki did, moves all links to nouns and noun phrases with disastrous impact on the link structure. Wikipedia no longer uses WikiLinks, unfortunately, but almost every link remains anchored to a noun and almost no editors use links intelligently or creatively. I don't see a problem with most links being nouns and noun phrases. Wikipedia is a reference, not a literary masterwork, and so consistency and the principle of least surprise should be followed. There's also no guideline that I know of that forbids the use of links creatively or intelligently for non-nouns, as long as they wouldn't negatively impact readability. I also don't believe Wikipedia/Mediawiki has required link labels to match link targets in something like ten years. It's often desirable or necessary to do that purely for semantic reasons.