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Quite often, we link in answers or comments to other questions, because a specific answer to that question seems helpful or presents another aspect. But we do not link to that specific answer, because there is technically no anchor of it. So someone following our link has to browse through all the answers, if we forgot to mention with our link (what happens quite often), whose specific answer we mentioned.

What's wrong with adding an anchor to answers? One could then link to them like in forum postings. Of course, it would be technically a bit more difficult, as forum postings don's raise by upvotes. But on the other side, it would be easier for users as they don't accidentally read the wrong answer.

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    $\begingroup$ See meta.stackexchange.com/a/45598/225179 $\endgroup$
    – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Mod
    May 23, 2015 at 12:52
  • $\begingroup$ How could I have missed that. :) $\endgroup$
    – Horst Grünbusch
    May 23, 2015 at 12:59
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    $\begingroup$ 'Share' isn't all that obvious; at any rate it took me a while to find out about it. But in general Meta SE is a good place to look for answers to technical questions about how the site works. $\endgroup$
    – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Mod
    May 23, 2015 at 13:09
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    $\begingroup$ "Share" buttons often link to some facebook, twitter whatsoever login page. Since I don't use these, my brain might have started to keep these buttons out of my conscience. It's a neuronal share button filter. $\endgroup$
    – Horst Grünbusch
    May 23, 2015 at 17:12
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    $\begingroup$ @HorstGrünbusch, for the longest time, I did the same thing. Because I don't use Facebook & twitter, I assumed the 'share' wasn't for me. I didn't figure it out until I had been here a couple years. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    May 24, 2015 at 14:08

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If you click on the faint gray "share" at the bottom right of an answer, a small box will pop up with a link highlighted. This link is an abbreviated version of the full link (it takes up fewer characters, which is useful for pasting into comments or chat) and has your usernumber appended to the end. If people subsequently click that link, a tally will be kept (secretly) by the SE system; when the tally reaches 25, you will earn the announcer badge. You can also delete your usernumber to save even more characters, but you would not progress towards the badge.

The other way, which gets you the full link, is to navigate to the answerer's userpage -> answers, then right click the link to their answer and 'save link as'. For the record, this will also not record progress towards announcer. I used to use this method before I learned how 'share' works. It is sufficiently inconvenient that I don't see any point in doing it anymore.

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    $\begingroup$ (+1) With many browsers, a right-click on the "share" link will raise a pop-up menu including an option to copy the link to a clipboard. This tends to be the easiest and fastest way. A similar operation applied to the time of post indicator on a comment will provide a link to the comment. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    May 23, 2015 at 16:17
  • $\begingroup$ Does "announcer" measure number of times a link is used within CV, rather than as an external link? I'm surprised at how few times it has been awarded in this case, it would suggest that few readers are clicking through links in questions/answers. $\endgroup$
    – Silverfish
    May 31, 2015 at 9:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Silverfish, announcer only counts the number of unique IP addresses that have clicked on a link in the special format that is provided by "share". Any other link won't do. Multiple clicks from the same IP address are only counted once. It doesn't matter if the link was on CV or posted off site (eg a tweet). I think you're right that few readers are clicking on the links listed in Qs & As here. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    May 31, 2015 at 14:10
  • $\begingroup$ @gung Thanks. Yes sorry should have clarified I meant only the "share" type links. I often use them for brevity and they must be strewn across my answers, questions and - especially, for space constraints - comments. But have never got that badge and few other folk have either. $\endgroup$
    – Silverfish
    May 31, 2015 at 16:04

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