At the moment including a shortcut like [cpan://DBI] in a post generates a link to http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=module&query=DBI: a query to search.cpan.org on the module name. I see this as having 2 major drawbacks: it doesn't link to the module page but rather to a query that returns a number of hits, from which most of the time you just want to go to the module page. Then by generating links to dynamic pages it probably impacts negatively in the ranking of CPAN docs in major search engines.

So I would suggest that instead it generates links like http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBI, which are more useful and, because the target is static, will help not only monks but also Perl users at large.

I would actually be a good thing if this would become the usual way to link to a module, not only here but in other context, so CPAN becomes more visible through search engines.

BTW the site engine could check that the link is valid, but that would be really optional, after all it doesn't check other types of links.

In reply to Proposal: change in the [cpan://module] shortcut by mirod

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.