I wonder if something similar is possible for a link to the free FontAwesome icons. That one is used in the settings description of some components, and if those only contained %{FA_free_link}, then updating the links in core would fix them in all components that use that link. Also, translators wouldn’t have to translate the description again.
I think ideally we would link to https://meta.discourse.org/styleguide/atoms/icons, and it would have a nice search interface to access all available icons. I did have a WIP for that a few months ago… will have to dust it off and see if I can get it mergeable
Lots of descriptions of settings of theme components and plugins will need an update again now. So, while for most components it’s mainly about updating the description of the svg_icons setting to mention version 7 instead of 6, it might be helpful to think about having a more permanent solution based on parameters so translators don’t have to translate everything again on each version update.
Adding an example here that contains both: The link and the version number