I think you’re mixing up “nice share” and “popular link.” Nice share means you shared a link to that post with your username at the end (like https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-to-discourse-start-here/1/1?u=ed_s) somewhere else and that link was clicked 25 times. For example, you could have shared the link to Meta’s welcome post on your forum. Since the badge cannot link to the external place where you shared the link and you could have shared it at different places, I think it makes sense to link it to the post you shared.
