So I’ve been noticing that there seems to be an increasing number of posts that refer to facts, events, or other things that are really annoyingly uninformative. This usually happens when a link is given.
The kinds of posts I’m talking about tend to say things like –
“Oh, this is getting interesting” – Link
“I wonder whether this is going to make some people nervous” – Link
“Ahhhh, he’s gotta be squirming now!” – Link
(These aren’t actual quotations.)
In a couple of cases, I requested further information from a poster, but I wanted to do it quite often. I have this belief that a poster should bother to do some minimal description of what’s being linked to, so even if I don’t click on the link, I have some idea what’s under discussion.
I mean, the threads on this board are supposed to be discussions, right? Not just links to other websites?
Links should be accompanied by some minimal description of what’s behind the link. Whaddya say?
Ah. Your other thread was cranky silliness, but this I can get behind. How much time does it take to type one sentence describing what you’re linking to? People who fail to provide information should be boiled alive, or at the very least, gently reminded to briefly describe what they’re linking to.
I agree. For example, if there’s a thread about favorite commercials or songs, half the posts will be blind YouTube links (i.e., without a description of what’s being linked to). So reading the thread requires one to repeatedly open YouTube links.
Yes, those are the worst, especially since there are many places I read the SDMB where it is awkward or impossible to look at videos without the sound turned off.
No, the worst are requests for some sort of assistance, yet do not give sufficient, if any, background information in the opening post. So the thread starts with a dozen different posts asking for details before any decent assistance can be provided.
For example, “I can get xxx application to work. Please help me.” Two days and a dozen posts later we find finally put together through bits and pieces the computer manufacturer, it’s operating system, relevant hardware details, the actual name of the application and what the person was actually attempting to do, but the computer vomited something else.
No, I don’t agree that these are the worst, because the OP might not actually understand what kind of information is required in order to answer a question like this.
The situations I’m talking about – with a link – are worse than this because the poster knows very well why he or she thinks the link is interesting but still declines to give any sort of description about the information available there.
Generally, we’ve always said that posters should provide some information, both in titles and before links. I’ll bring it up with the moderator group, we’ve tended to enforce this about titles, but perhaps have been lax about posts with links.
Part of the problem is that we (the mods) are not permitted to edit posts except under certain circumstances (request by poster, fixing links, breaking links, and a few others.) So, the request really has to be to posters, to please provide some information about why anyone should click on your link (or whatever.)