At the moment, all backlinks are created equal, and the only (including the beta server) options for changing how they are viewed through backlink portals are sorting by date created or by their slots. I propose a way to mark some references, tags, or portals as more important than others, by analogy with how there are three different header types. The weakest weight would be automatically assigned during normal operation (and when performing bulk operations, see the request to turn text into references from text references portal). The weights above that would be assigned manually during tagging or referencing or portalling, either by adding extra # or [ or through the context menu. The differently weighted backlinks would then be grouped by weight in the backlink portal and have different edge thickness in graph view. Ideally, they’s also have an intrinsic powerup with their weight so the rem they are contained in can be filtered for (much like highlighting assigns a particular colour), but I’m not sure whether it’s possible to assign a powerup to an entity inside a rem. They may also show their elevated status visually by having a different font, spacing, or some other way (underlining is not taken for anything at the moment).
Until queries are implemented, this would allow at least some sorting and filtering out of undesirable results (i.e. rather than only search in rem having or not having a particular universal descriptor, or only cards or plain text as queries would allow, the relative weights are statically determined at the moment of reference creation and then automatically sorted).