The idea behind linking in e2, as far as I understand it, is to enable the rapid exploration of trains of thought. User X reads about Catbus, which leads to My Neighbor Totoro, which leads to anime, then manga video et cetera. Useful links lead to writeups that provide supporting information and background; noders choose links accordingly.

Like it or not, though, the appearance of links changes the emphasis of a writeup. Links provide cadence to a writeup, like line breaks in a poem.

i can make a writeup look like old school rap:

i'm the king of rock
there ain't none higher
sucker emcees
can call me sire
(run dmc, "king of rock")

Personally, I'm all for the proliferation of poetry, fiction, and errant story fragments in e2.

Poetry has traditionally subjected itself to such strange artificial structures as the sonnet and haiku. Could new ones happen here? A poem where every word must link, or where every link must refer to another poem?

If I were a good poet, I might do this first.

I must note that hardlinking can convey hidden messages (no, not just with the pipe (|)). That is, creating a hard link to an expression can mean "please node this". Using this power properly can do interesting things, of course, assuming that others will obey this request.

kaatunut notes that someone whose name he can't remember seemed to think some alpha centauri quotations he noded had some phrases that inspired him to node

Also, I must say that I used to link all words that had any point of linking, but I've dropped that practice. I mean, what's the point? Apart from your HTML-style links (see blah blah blah), only really strange words and meaningful expressions should be linked, methinks. Wordlinking doesn't really serve people that much, and it makes reader's head hurt even if there is a node for every word linked.

kaatunut thinks to himself, does not node exist just to be linked to? what good is a node like "if" if nobody will link to such minor word?