I very much agree. This is a technical site, and we have a technical audience. Replacing the link text with something other than the URL should only happen if there's a significant improvement in readability/flow and if the text provides more information than the bare link. For links to wikis, bug trackers, and top-level sites (say, for example, http://unix.stackexchange.com/), the bare URL often is more informative than a concise description would be.

I very much agree. This is a technical site, and we have a technical audience. Replacing the link text with something other than the URL should only happen if there's a significant improvement in readability/flow and if the text provides more information than the bare link. For links to wikis, bug trackers, and top-level sites (say, for example, https://unix.stackexchange.com/), the bare URL often is more informative than a concise description would be.