cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/post/11661
With a fresh new start we have the power to enforce some unspoken etiquettes on the site in the hopes of a better platform than Reddit.
One great feature I see no one talking about is that we can write our own text when posting links, which is extremely useful for communities that mostly link articles. A lot of the political and tech related articles are mostly fluff, filled with jargon and clickbait only to have a one line news at the end of it all.
We should try to make it a habit to write the main point(s) that the article is making to avoid misinformation and ragebait titles. Ideally, a post without any text backing the article would become a red flag that it’s posted by some bot or mass spammer, and would not be floated to the front page.
Interested to hear what the rest of the Lemmy community thinks!
Even better is to post the text of paywalled articles so people without access can still read them.
Absolutely. Nothing more annoying than seeing an article that looks interesting but it’s paywalled and there isn’t even a summary in the replies.
Interesting thought. I honestly post without my own text on links because I’m hoping to engender conversation, and I always felt that by having my own thoughts tied directly to the link in that way kind of steers discussion. Instead I will post the link alone and then add a comment. I’d love to hear some other perspectives on it.
I solve this by just quoting the article at the points that describe/explain why I’m sharing it
Yeah I’d much prefer people do it your way - or just the link is fine if you want to share and don’t have a comment.
I always liked Metafilter’s “Front Page Post” where the text body included many more links and information about the subject. (I have linked here to what I consider a particularly well done example) They often also include links to previous discussions about the same subject.
I think there’s some quality writers out there and some people doing really good research (and I’m not just talking about DD in /r/Superstonk), and having additional information is of great service to deeper discussion. Otherwise half of the discussion can be unknowingly a retread of very well-worn ideas. That’s less likely to happen the more information is added.
I like the idea of a TL;DR at the beginning of a post, but I also like the idea of additional links and information “below the jump” as the beanplaters at MeFi say. This allows the best of both worlds, a quick rundown as well as more information for those who wish to view it.
Down for tl;drs
I remember /r/politics had the tldr bot, would there be anyway to get that going on news heavy communities?
It might even be possible to automate this with one of the GPTs – ask for a summary of the page. That’s going to make it really hard for real journalists to get paid though
