Starter comments on Tildes?
I get a lot out of browsing Tildes and all the conversations here. This is in keeping with the Tildes philosophy of high-quality content and conversation.
In the spirit of quality discussion, context is everything and reference points matter. I have found my own thoughts nudged many times here, and often the comments and points of view lend entirely new perspective to the content (and are sometimes more interesting).
While I appreciate the discussions, there are often links to an article, a video, a blog, or anything really, with no context and little description.
So in the spirit of conversation, I'm asking if there could be "conversation starter" comments for posted links. I'd like to know why this video or that blog is different from just randomly finding some link online. Why is this link on Tildes? What makes it interesting or important? What are we talking about? Where is the quality conversation?
Is that too much, or would that be reasonable? Thoughts?
I think it's something that should be encouraged, but not required.
For video, I think it should be highly encouraged. I created this post last week and provided a starter comment. Mainly because 1) the post/video title wasn't obviously linked with the video's topic, and 2) I know how I am with video, which might be like you: Why should I watch a video on something that I may not really care about in the first place? But if I had some context beforehand, that might get me over the hump.
For other things, specifically text-based news articles, I could see an argument of just wanting to inform. I've done that with submissions, especially on reddit. Hey, this thing is going on, it's happening, be aware those who are interested. I'm not necessarily trying to create conversation. On Tildes, I'll often quote the opening paragraph, and that'll be that.
Anyway, I say encouraged and not required, because I think it's important, especially on a smaller website, with a smaller community, to not put too many barriers into posting. Like I sometimes get hung up on the topic tags, even though I know we have community members who will tag/re-tag everything. Which has prevented me from posting before, because I'll get distracted while trying to figure out tags, and forget that I'm trying to post something. I know tags aren't required, but it feels that way sometimes. If people have to come up with a prompt or some explanation beforehand, some may not post at all. Which I think would be more "damaging" than not providing any starter comments/context.
We used to do that, I still do quite often, usually using an interesting pulled quote from the article - but some find them less than ideal, finding that they superficially increase the perceived "activity" on the post and that the author is attempting to draw more attention to their own post than others.
I for one am in agreement with you, but it shouldn't be an expected requirement as that could lead to a decrease in topics being posted.
I do this for practically everything I post. Given, most of the stuff I post are conversation starters in and of themselves.
But the Tildes post UI is built specifically for what you’re asking for: there is both a link and a text box. I think that, for the most part, everyone should be filling both.
I believe starter comments are generally encouraged, especially when sharing more subjective things such as essays or music.
Sometimes I leave my own "starter" comment on other submissions from creators I already personally enjoyed in the hopes that I can convince just one person to check it out when they otherwise would not have.