From when self-links were implemented in Parsoid,
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/services/parsoid/+/991827/13#message-2613035d7d4b3b21eaa956ad815b77dd962b26cd

href's are left around in the non-fragment case. That can be explored separately since it has consequences to rt.

@cscott wrote,

I'd prefer to keep the hrefs around for all self-links and just use CSS to suppress the link. pointer-events: none and maybe another CSS rule to ensure that the pointer shape doesn't change to a hand.

What I’d like to be strict about is the Expected result, not the Other information – the latter is only explanation and an idea. I didn’t know about pointer-events:none, but now that I explored it, I noticed it goes too far – it not only disables link behavior, but also other things (at least in Firefox, where I tested it):

• cursor: since it does as if the text wasn’t there at all, it doesn’t show a text (I-beam) cursor, but rather the standard default (arrow) cursor.
• Drag-and-drop: the text can be selected using the mouse, but it can’t be dragged and dropped.
• (There can be other inconsistencies as well, which I haven’t noticed.)