That ought to be a pretty good motivation right there. People are much less likely to go through the nine steps of copying a link in text than they are to just click. I admit it, I generally skip unlinked addresses, though I feel a twinge of regret at what I might be missing.

Still, I wish it were easier. I've been gradually adding features to my mental specification for the next-generation post editor, and near the top of the list is an easier way to make links in posts.

It's been suggested that the filter could try and recognize URLs and automatically create a link around them. I've seen it done. But it's tricky, and you'd get a lot of false positives, text turned into links that shouldn't be. Computers are just too stupid to reliably interpret human writing. I'm more likely to go with a toolbox that you can use, and that keeps you in control, rather than leave too much up to a dumb computer.

In the meantime, though it's a bit of extra typing, creating real links isn't rocket science*. The pattern's easy to memorize:

<a href="address">caption</a>

(Don't forget the quotes around the address!)

(*--Seeing as how we have an unusually high pecentage of genuine rocket scientists around here, we shouldn't should be seeing naked addresses in posts. C'mon, you geniuses, get with it!)