There seems to be a convention here where photos belonging to others are text-linked, not hot-linked. But I would much rather see the image in Q&As than have to click through links that are critical to understanding the content of a question or answer.
Related discussion (from 3 years ago): Should we disallow hot-linking?
My impression is that hot-linking in general has become much less problematic and discouraged than it was a few years ago. For example, I posted this reverse-engineering question How can one capture gun bore shots?How can one capture gun bore shots? and the subject photo is in Flickr, which has no problem with hotlinking since they provide a Share URL with every photo.
Further: Could the answer to this question, even if merely guidance, be included in http://photo.stackexchange.com/help/askinghttps://photo.stackexchange.com/help/asking?