Remove Blogroll

[Presskopp]

This is a follow-up to #21307, also related #22994

I found inconsistent translations (german) regarding 4 strings starting with "Show Link".
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-links.php?marks=147-154

I then realized these belong to the Blogroll/Link List, which is not part of WP Core anymore, see

#21307 (Remove Link Manager from core, 5 years old)

On Aug 21, 2012, @macmanx said the following on
​https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/my-blog-has-no-links-section-in-the-admin

The Links section was removed from the core WordPress.org software, which means that it will probably be removed from WordPress.com soon.

However there is the official Plugin re-enabling the Blogroll here:
​https://wordpress.org/plugins/link-manager/
Active installs: 100,000+ !!

so this is still supported in a way, now in 2017.

Now the question is: Do we still care for this and so I would have to translate the strings correctly OR
can we completely remove this code exuding cadaverous odour?

[SergeyBiryukov]

Related: #40088

[Presskopp]

Related: #42136

[Clorith]

The links section is still visible and usable to those who had used it before it was hidden in core by default, pulling it out completely would likely remove data/features from sites (as made obvious by how the amount of users manually implementing it after the fact as well).

[jorbin]

I completely agree with @Clorith. RIght now, the maintenance burden of maintaining the blogroll where it is (hidden for new users or users that never used it). I think if that burden ever changes we should revisit it, but for me this is maybelater.

[webliberty]

I agree with @Presskopp - the Blogroll and table wp_links in database must be removed from core.

[Clorith]

I'm going to close this off as maybelater for now.

There's no maintenance burden, it exists for those who used it, and it's not there for those who don't use it. I see no real benefit to modifying the DB schema just for this (and given the popularity of the plugin to re-enable the admin menu for it, it would be silly to remove it, I am fairly confident other plugins rely on this table as well).

As Jorbin mentioned, if there suddenly becomes a maintenance burden with this module, we can revisit it at that time, but for now there's really no need to worry about it.

As an aside, we do not know how many users actually use this feature where it's kept enabled for them from before we removed it by default, this means that if we pull it out of core those sites will need to get a plugin to restore functionality that is also reflected on the front-end, and is therefore a step that must be carefully weighed before we make that move in the future.