MD034 - Bare URL used --> false positive for Reference Links with comment block

On my Jekyll blog, I use often link references to group the long URLs at the end of the post. I start the block with {% comment %}<!-- Link References -->{% endcomment %}

Works no MD034:

[MD034][ref001]

[ref001]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint/blob/master/doc/Rules.md#md031---fenced-code-blocks-should-be-surrounded-by-blank-lines
[ref002]: https://github.com
[ref003]: https://github.com/DavidAnson

False positive of MD034, I got the warning because of my comment line:

[MD034][ref001]

{% comment %}<!-- Link References -->{% endcomment %}
[ref001]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint/blob/master/doc/Rules.md#md031---fenced-code-blocks-should-be-surrounded-by-blank-lines
[ref002]: https://github.com
[ref003]: https://github.com/DavidAnson

Workaround of MD034, add a empty line between comment and list of references:

[MD034][ref001]

{% comment %}<!-- Link References -->{% endcomment %}

[ref001]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint/blob/master/doc/Rules.md#md031---fenced-code-blocks-should-be-surrounded-by-blank-lines
[ref002]: https://github.com
[ref003]: https://github.com/DavidAnson

Is there a way to get ride of the MD034 warning, without the empty line?

[nschonni]

The braces around the links aren’t valid for reference links https://spec.commonmark.org/0.29/#reference-link. They should just be the value inside the braces if it wasn’t a reference link

[DavidAnson]

That’s a good observation, thanks @nschonni. Though it doesn’t affect the behavior here and I think it’s by design per my comment above.