OK, upon actually reading the OP this time: Leaving the text inside the URL tag, but just removing the actual link? Um… yeah, that seems to me to be at worst changing the meaning and intent of the post, medium worst bad form, and at best harmless but just completely pointless, all depending on the situation.
I see nothing wrong with it and do it all the time. I haven’t removed the link from their post, just not bothered to quote the link. Sometimes I’ll omit the text if it’s stand alone and doesn’t affect the statement, sometimes just the link.
Certainly if I’m quoting wikipedia I will delete all crosslinks. They have dozens of random pointless linked words in any article that have no bearing on what I am saying or the content of that post.
Heck, they may post “read this link here” and make here a link, I’ll quote them to refer to the comment so people know which link I’m referring to, but delete the link. It doesn’t need to be there twice. If they didn’t read it the first time through, they can go back and get it. If they did read it the first time through, they probably don’t need to go back and read it again. And if they do, they have a reference to find it.
I don’t see how it could be an issue or a form of disrespect or anything. Links are backup material, or “here’s my cite” preemptively provided. They aren’t the person’s words.
I will usually annotate format changes - especially if I add them. But links? Nah.
You don’t use the quote button? So you’re not using quote tags, name, or arrow back? Or you’re doing extra work to add those?
Ditto, unless it’s not so serious a post in my opinion and understood as such by other readers. Or I fuck up because I’m in a hurry.
It is the correct thing to do, since we use ellipses in citation uncommented/bracketed to show, uh, ellipses.