Hyperlinks - too good to be true. Where would the World Wide Web be without it? Nowhere. The Web would not be a web without hyperlinks, or links.
Too much of a good thing isn't good. Too much links is just bad. Bad for the reader. Bad for the writer. Very bad for me, since I read and write.
Why is it so bad ?
The reader gets distracted. Notes and references lie outside text. That we do since the beginning of academic time.
The writer gets enslaved. Now, a writer does not write anymore : he administers. He validates pages, he fixes broken links, etc. From great power comes great responsibility.
So what shall we do about that ?
Two ideas for links : 1. don't maintain useless ones ; 2. maintain the others with templates.
Suppose you want to cite **A Game of Chess** by T.S. Eliot. There is no need to create a link for that : if the reader wants to find the text, he can select the title, right-click and search for it. Try it.
But even if you really want the readers to click on a link, you can create one that leads to a search. A template can then be used for any search about bibliographic information. You can think better ones than me.
Links die. A page with dead links can do evil things to the mind. If Hell exists, It certainly administers. For lost souls surfing infinite pages full of dead links.
