Should I include a trailing slash / in a symlink to a directory?

The only thing I can think of is that it "protects" you from someone deleting the directory and creating a file.

[user@host linktest]$ mkdir test
[user@host linktest]$ ln -s test/ slash
[user@host linktest]$ ln -s test noslash
[user@host linktest]$ ls -l
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 paul paul    4 Feb 21 21:00 noslash -> test
lrwxrwxrwx 1 paul paul    5 Feb 21 21:00 slash -> test/
drwxrwxr-x 2 paul paul 4096 Feb 21 20:59 test
[user@host linktest]$ file *slash
noslash: symbolic link to `test'
slash: symbolic link to `test/'
[user@host linktest]$ rmdir test
[user@host linktest]$ file *slash
noslash: broken symbolic link to `test'
slash: broken symbolic link to `test/'
[user@host linktest]$ touch test
[user@host linktest]$ file *slash
noslash: symbolic link to `test'
slash: broken symbolic link to `test/'
[user@host linktest]$

The version with the slash breaks when the target is replaced with a file.

There's no difference. (There would be a difference if the target was not an existing directory.)

The final slash might have ended up there because of shell completion: with some configuration, ln -s tarTabSpacelink completes to ln -s target/ link.

Interesing question. I've made small test:

$ mkdir dir
$ ln -s dir/ test_slash
$ ln -s dir test_noslash
$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 2 vrusinov vrusinov 4096 Feb 21 16:41 dir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vrusinov vrusinov    3 Feb 21 16:41 test_noslash -> dir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vrusinov vrusinov    4 Feb 21 16:41 test_slash -> dir/
$ strace ls test_slash 2> trace_slash
$ strace ls test_noslash 2> trace_noslash
$ wc -l trace_*
   79 trace_noslash
   79 trace_slash
$ diff -u trace_* | less

As you can see, there is no difference in number of system calls (at least for ls) and traces looks very similar. Howewer, this is just dump test and I'm not sure - there might be some differences.