Hi Janet.. no.. in composing a post, when one adds an outside link to an article, there're options for "Automatically parse links in text" and "Automatically retrieve titles from external links". I always have those checked, and when in the past I added links, the title of the link appeared instead of "http://...etc."
Just recently it didn't work for me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14visa.html
In the past the article title would have shown up in blue with underlining as a live link, while hiding the link address. Maybe something has changed at NYT? I have successfully made title-appearing links to them in the past.
Let's try another:
Our new home-page | Economist.com
That worked..! so I guess it is not the ER forum that is the issue. I was just surprised to see the link not transform as it had in the past. Neverrrr mind!!