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I feel like I’m in the minority, but I value people sourcing high quality links. Starting a discussion around them is more valuable but nothing is preventing that, so I’m not sure what is being proposed.
Do we want to require people have commentary on something they share? How do we enforce their commentary is coherent? Voting? Isn’t that what we already do absent the requirement?
This feels mostly like an education thing rather than a law we should have. If we want the discussion we should start one or encourage the OP to start one … otherwise they’re already punished by you all not zapping it.
So questions …
Is adding another form field to the link post going solve this behavior?
Is the lack of this field what is actually preventing commentary or might it be something else?
Doesn't need to be a requirement. Best path would be for people to tip the heck out of those that provide quality links with a short synopsis and don't tip link only posts at all.
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I feel like I’m in the minority, but I value people sourcing high quality links.
Feel the same. I don't need to read what other people think about something before checking it out myself. it's possibly even better if I can make up my mind without any possible bias beforehand. If OPs start a discussion about the link it's a nice extra but I think the main content is the link itself.
One compromise I just came up with is to show if the first comment in a link post is a comment by the OP itself. Like a tag. But also not sure about this. This imo only makes sense if people really don't click on a link post unless the OP commented. Since we can already see if there are already comments.
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Actually, this is a better compromise than what I proposed above except it should be optional. This might just make the UX around adding your own thoughts to a link better so more people use it.
Additionally, this would make (if we want that) adding a tag to a link post so people can immediately if the OP shared his thoughts easier. The tags depends if something was added to that text input during sharing the link.
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I think part of the disagreement is that I'm pretty sure we all hate form fields more than we think we do.
"Just stick another hurdle in my way. I don't mind." Ya shure about that?
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I would defer to you on this, because I have seen in the past SN items I was sure I wanted that I never used once I got it. I can't find the post now, but a while back I actually tried what I thought of as a hybrid post, where I made a discussion post, started the message body with a link, and then added my thoughts. It didn't work too well, but maybe I should have tried a few more.
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Don't defer! Rebel! I'm going to be wrong. You're going to be wrong. But we don't know until we discuss it. Courts don't only have judges. :)
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And I'm a goddamn lawyer, too. I should know better! But, I see you're point about mandatory forms. What about an optional comment? It would make users like me who typically ignore pure link posts pause?
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Comments are already optional but I know that's not what you mean. You mean something attached to the post in a singular way.
We could give it a shot. My intuition says it isn't the option to comment that's lacking. I think it's the motivation, desire, or even ability to comment that's lacking.
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In any case, the UI makes it harder to comment by not being 'singular'. It should make it easy, but also optional. The current workaround is to post the link in the body of a discussion post rather than fragment it into a post and a comment. The latter is not only bad UX, but also confuses people as to whether to reply under the link post or the comment.
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I guess we could add a collapsed text form field to link posts.
Currently, we are even penalizing OPs who comment their own link post (like @hn, lol) since you then have to pay again. Additionally, I think I even noticed while working on @hn that the link post costs 1 sat and then the first comment costs 10 sats. So it's 11x as expensive currently, lol
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do we hate typing into this form field?
It's not the typing. This comment thread isn't the context of someone who is submitting a link. Product design is about embodying the appropriate context at every step.
I agree it might be worth experimenting with given everyone's feelings around it. My intuition says this is better implemented as a gentle nudge/reminder, e.g. "posts with a thoughtful comment by the OP earn 300% more sats on average."
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I agree it might be worth experimenting with given everyone's feelings around it.
Yep, maybe hide a text input field for a first comment in options?
I think we shouldn't at least penalize OPs commenting their links with an additional fee of 10 sats (just confirmed locally on 654ecaf)
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or make an exception in the spam interval for this - probably required even with the optional text input field
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This self-reply spam interval was created because people complained about OPs commenting on their own posts 2-5 times adding other links and context (not commentary) ... and so they would be disappointed when they opened an item and there wasn't a discussion.
Yes, good idea.
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...perhaps a worthy experiment to consider?
In my opinion: definitely.
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