I have to say I actually really like the how in-line entities are created in Fibery. There are several advantages from my perspective:
Quick Operation to Create & Link to New Entities
You can create new entities and link to them in one operation (this is one main reason for using it). There isn’t a great advantage when linking to existing entities.
Reference Context
When you use the # or create entity approach, the reference in the referenced entity includes at least the entire paragraph. So if I had the following text in one meeting note:
The explicit inline reference provides a better context than the other than the “linked reference”
Of course, the user can highlight longer sections of text, but that means more highlighting and disruption to flow. I think this can be better resolved once there is a way to show the context of the reference a bit more clearly (as described in Show in Reference Highlights Referenced Entity more clearly and In Highlights, “Roam-like” inclusion of Hierarchy of Text Blocks)
Issues
However, I think the concerns here are quite valid:
Deleted entities
I had raised the issue of loss of context when entities are deleted here:
I do feel this is actually a serious issue because it is easy to miss and can become a problem many months later. I think that a search and replace operation should always be done when there references attached to an entity.
Renamed entities
I think the more interesting case is when an entity is created and named in context, but later on the name is changed because it doesn’t make sense in other contexts (like in a list view of other similar items). I think there is again a loss of context in the original text that would be detrimental to future reviews. I think this is where the suggestion to retain the original text separately really shows its value.