Linking related topics together - like a futher reading list

nsz
Sun, 23 Sep 2018 23:29:26 +0000

Could we have a feature where similar posts can be linked/tagged and showup somewhere obvious, so you can access both posts from each other, linking the two. Something anyone visiting the topic can do.

So there is a link from post A to B but also B to A. You then kind of get a chain of relevant posts, like a further reading list. Maybe only showing topics that are two-three links deep, idk that's just details.

I really like the way r/AskHistorians does it where because of the moderation it's always very easy to find the comment that links previous discussion, but again that solution is not reversible, from the linked topics I can't get to the current topic.

It encourages people to look over previous posts and engage in those discussions, and to participate in a larger discussion across the site. Potentially with one topic link you can get 4-5 other topics.

It should help with answering frequent questions or concerns as it's easy to connect relevant discussion. But also pretty much any other discussion, say nuclear energy is discussed extensively here, and follow the links to the other places people have discussed it, give readers the site context for a topic, and a convenient way to look for further discussion.

I mostly see it being used by a poster who has already answered a question in a previous post and will link the reply in a comment, but this way it's far more accessible to anyone viewing the topic and not lost in the comments. Or maybe someone was interested enough to look further themselves and I've got to believe they would feel generous enough to bother linking the two topics they spent time looking for. Making it just more convenient for everyone.

Take for example this foss topic, I posted basically a follow-up topic about specific foss software.

So a comment can be posted linking the relevant topic but that can easily get lost in the fray and does nothing to link the original topic to the new one. Yeah if someone was really interested they could search the foss tag and easily find it but it's much more convenient with it linked and only one person needs to go through the process of searching.

I kind of like the idea but can see how it's very similar to the tag system and groups. In practice though I just use tags and groups to filter out stuff I don't want to see and sometimes to help with searching.
This would be a feature that focuses to continuing the discussion, and making it more convenient to do so.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tildes/6qq/linking_related_topics_together_like_a_futher_reading_list

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