People use the [http://example.com http://example.com] syntax because our parser is not intelligent enough to ignore punctuation marks after the URL; most commonly the problem occurs with parentheses.
Yes, and I'm 99% sure there used to be a style-guide suggesting people use this rather than assuming the software would always autolink plaintext URLs. It seems to have gone now (or I can't find it), and perhaps it dated to when the software was in the process of being rewritten or something.
Personally, though, I would very much prefer if every link had a sensible link text. While I admit the URL is better than "click here", I still think it's pretty lame, and you can *always* find something better.
Yes, there are a few instances where it's valid - like, in order to construct a sentence which tells the user what the address is for future reference, and turns that address into a link at the same time in case they want to go there right now; but mostly, it's just links waiting for a decent description.
It's bug #974082, BTW.
Actually, that's exactly an instance of elegant degradation. In plaintext you get the full information: brief link text plus the URL. With CSS on the web page, we can hide the URL since you'll see it when hovering over the link anyway.
I see your point, but this is information that neither Wikipedia, nor any other website I can think of, traditionally shows *at all* [even Slashdot only puts the domain]. People are usually quite happy to let their browsers tell them where links head if they want to, and writing out the whole URL can take up quite a bit of space and rather breaks up the flow of text and layout that the article's author(s) thought they were creating.
Although your reasons seem sound, your stance raises the question: Does that mean you reject the idea of using the same HTML for different layouts? Thing is, that is the whole purpose of CSS.
Well, I guess it does rather raise that question, but my answer would be that I love the concept of CSS, and the idea of using one page for multiple formattings is great. But in reality, like all things web-based, it has to be done in a way that makes no assumptions about the client's environment - and since it's entirely a client-side technology, that means a lot of compromises. So, for instance, the non-CSS'd version of a page is best written in an order that will make sense for a linear display (e.g. the venerable lynx). I think the non-CSS'd version having the same *information* as the CSS'd one - no more, no less - is similar, but that's just an opinion.
I had another thought, though, about a possibly nicer way of having this option if people really want it - enable it in MySkin but not Monobook, so that people can reconstruct "monobook but with visible link text" if they want, but it's not there by default. That may be more coding than it's worth though, if MySkin is just literally MonoBook minus the CSS; I don't really understand how the skinning works.