Right now the default is set to same window for a couple reasons. First is most users are setting links to inside the community. Since you are inside the community you don't want to have a dozen tabs open of your community. The secod is really just an extention of the first. Users are more acustom to clicking a back button then closing a tab.

What is everyone elses thoughts on this? Should the default be changed?

I'm talking about external links. I have found that user satisfaction increases when links open in new tabs, even if it's just for one link. I'm not necessarily talking about a dozen links. What happens when a link opens in the same window is that internet users "lose" the page they were on, get annoyed and have to open it again, sometimes getting lost in hitting the back button numerous times if they've been navigating around several pages in the new link. Just because they've clicked on a link doesn't mean they want to navigate away from the page they were on...especially when it's a page they needed to log into with a password. Would love to hear thoughts from others on this :)

Personally and for our communities, I prefer the default to be set for same-window since that's pretty much standard across the web and what people are familiar with. I do understand wanting external pages to open in new windows, but I feel like that should be a user's choice and not something that's forced on them. I think most people are used to the control-click or right-click-new-tab moves and have their own browsing habits fairly ingrained - messing with that can often be more irritating than helpful.

We have certain links in our communities that open in new pages, but we just manually set those. There are so few, though, that it's not really a big deal to manage it.