I don't care much about adding shortcuts in general, but I think there needs to be some consideration over where these links go, since they imply a sort of endorsement from perlmonks. While I think there are very few people who will object to the [cpan://] link, I do object to dictionary.com (I use m-w instead) for the following reasons:
  1. Allows l33t style spelling
  2. Really just takes a lot of other people's definitions, including those in the jargon file, which isn't how a dictionary is usually compiled
  3. Includes value judgements on subject matter
For an example, see this entry. If you don't consider that statement that software piracy is illegal and should be reported to <non-governmental agency> a value judgement, search for the term 'murder' or 'rape' and note the lack of a similar statement.

Non-perl related links should be carefully considered.

In reply to (kudra: not dictionary.com) Re: New types of links by kudra
in thread New types of links by brianarn

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.