Link padding sucks

March 2, 2005 6:05 AM

This comment lends credence to my prior concern. I love well researched posts containing multiple links. However, in my view every link in a post should link to notable sites; not one link with needless, lazy padding. I'm concerned if members, new and old alike, think "padding out" a post with a 3-minute googling exercise is a good thing.
posted by nthdegx to Etiquette/Policy at 6:05 AM (35 comments total)

Absolutely.
I'm fairly certain that we are all roundly aware of what a tie is. The post would not have been improved by one or more links to Tie Rack or, perhaps, the inevitable Wikipedia entry for neckties.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:25 AM on March 2, 2005

Agreed, although I will say it's noty so much any one instance I'm concerned about as it is a prevailing view, or a progression towards one. I really hope it isn't but there are plenty of posts where the two or three great links are made harder to find by the four or five average ones. I've made posts like that myself.
posted by nthdegx at 6:33 AM on March 2, 2005

I agree. I dislike the multi-link window dressing that seems to go along with so many posts. Post your link, and the rest of us can use Google if we want to see more sites about "neckties" or "Gorbachev" or whatever the topic is.

I am in favor of pointing out interesting parts of the site you link to with additional links. In your case, I don't think this was possible---it was just one webpage.

Thank goodness we've mostly gotten over that fondness for taking a short phrase and linking every letter separately. Ugh.
posted by tss at 6:35 AM on March 2, 2005

Thank goodness we've mostly gotten over that fondness for taking a short phrase and linking every letter separately. Ugh.

See - I like those too, once in a while. Bad links make bad posts, although not exclusively. I think there's plenty of room for posts of all shapes and sizes, though.
posted by nthdegx at 6:41 AM on March 2, 2005

mcgraw links a great deal in every post, but I like his approach.
He leaves me like a night after one drink too many - happy, a little confused, with inexplicable marks on clothing.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:47 AM on March 2, 2005

go back to the teevee berek.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:48 AM on March 2, 2005

I agree. I dislike the multi-link window dressing that seems to go along with so many posts. Post your link, and the rest of us can use Google if we want to see more sites about "neckties" or "Gorbachev" or whatever the topic is.
I think it's because people were called out and one-link posts complained about so much a while ago--lots of people now think they have to have more than one link.
posted by amberglow at 7:10 AM on March 2, 2005

Consider: If you have one good new link that motivated the posting, and three googled ones to "round it out", how will the reader be able to tell the difference without clicking all of them?
posted by smackfu at 7:27 AM on March 2, 2005

May I turn your attention to my favorite example ever of lazy link padding: The infamous Lindbergh post of February '05. Now that, kids, was lazy padding par excellence.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:33 AM on March 2, 2005

Since nthdegx was responding to me in the second link above, I feel compelled to point out that my beef there was only with lame one-link posts, such as to a page that's only going to exist for 24-36 hours. Having just one link doesn't make a post lame at all, but a post with one link such as that mentioned could possibly be salvaged by adding supplementary links.

At any rate, berek's comment is one of the most idiotic I've seen in a while. For someone who's never posted on the front page to be "correcting" a venerable poster such as nthdegx (and listing links as plain text instead of, you know, links) is hilarious.

Folks: Adding more links to someone else's post is fine. Just don't make an ass of yourself (henceforth, "make a berek of yourself") in the process.
posted by soyjoy at 7:38 AM on March 2, 2005

Could be. If you can collect two-three good links in one subject, by all means go for it! If you only got one, just post that one.
posted by dabitch at 7:42 AM on March 2, 2005

go back to the teevee berek.

i smell missing comments. again.
posted by quonsar at 7:42 AM on March 2, 2005

oops. never mind. again.
posted by quonsar at 7:43 AM on March 2, 2005

I heart the one-link. Not so much lazy as working with an ancient computer that rolls its eyes in distress and faints if you ask it to do anything more than click on a link or two. I realize I can't ask the rest of you to sacrifice your adobe, your flash, your graphic-intensive sites, but I personally have to pick and chose very carefully as though walking through a minefield: click on one link too many and the whole thing is liable to blow up.

So one great link that gives me the whole kit and caboodle is Metafilter gold for me.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:46 AM on March 2, 2005

I thought berek's request was a dumb one, but they do have a point that it's hard to read that page. It looks like crap in firefox, with tons of weird paragraph breaks and wall-to-wall text.

i smell missing comments. again.

Are you accusing me of deleting stuff? Because I just woke up.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:46 AM on March 2, 2005

lots of people now think they have to have more than one link.

Unless it's a great find, FPPs should have more than one link. It discourages op-eds, soap box rants, and newsfilter.
posted by BlueTrain at 7:47 AM on March 2, 2005

It should be a great find.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:52 AM on March 2, 2005

Are you accusing me of deleting stuff?

yes, i was. but as you can see, 60 seconds later i realized the error of that conclusion. i've donned my nuns habit and commenced whacking my knuckles with a ruler.
posted by quonsar at 8:09 AM on March 2, 2005

That's just the image I was casting about for this morning, q.
posted by cortex at 8:14 AM on March 2, 2005

Yeah, sorry soyjoy -- I wasn't trying to imply what came before my linked comment was somehow relevant.
posted by nthdegx at 8:14 AM on March 2, 2005

i've donned my nuns habit and commenced whacking my knuckles with a ruler.

I'd pay for those pics.
posted by ChrisTN at 8:16 AM on March 2, 2005

I don't mind a few links to "round it out", as long as those links are carefully reviewed and chosen for their quality. This is a filter, after all. I'm happy to have the FPPer do the Googling, and boil 4 or 5 pages of results down to the 2 or 3 links they think best elucidate the concepts they're putting forward.

It's a matter of having good judgement and sorting through many links to find those that give the greatest dimension to the post topic. What I don't like are the links that are baldly inserted as mere padding -- lame news articles from small-time newspapers that require registry; Joe Schmo's hideous hobby web page, etc.
posted by Miko at 8:20 AM on March 2, 2005

I'm still using msie, and the damn text clipped the right side. HOWEVER, I was fascinated by the article enough, I just copied it into notepad.

Yah, some picture of the more obscure forms of nooses would have been welcome, it was still very interesting.
posted by Goofyy at 8:27 AM on March 2, 2005

So to sum up: it was a post that seemed interesting, but the link the post hinged on was awfully formatted and kind of boring to slog through, even if you could get past all the weird text errors, so another member who maybe didn't express themselves clearly asked that something better be added to the post or put in place of the post, which was interpretted by the original poster as a reaction to the mythical requirement for more than one link per post, which doesn't really exist, nor should it.

Is that about the entire situation summed up?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:55 AM on March 2, 2005

One link posts are OK, unless the link is lame. No links for links sake please. If you have other good links, just add them to the thread! IMHO this post could have used a couple of complementary links, but that doesn't make it a "bad" post.

The text was clipped and difficult to read in Safari too.

On preview: Given the generic suggested links, it did seem like links for links sake was the demand.
posted by nequalsone at 9:02 AM on March 2, 2005

Had your readybrek, eh, mathowie? Yes, pretty much, except from the comments I'm fairly sure we aren't all seeing the same formatting. The wall to wall text isn't the easiest, but I found if I resized my window a little thinner it was perfectly readable. I thought it was an excellently written, very interesting article, myself (and for me the web doesn't get any better than well written, informative plain(ish) text). If I could characterise it as "boring to slog through" I certainly wouldn't have posted it.

As I've also said I've seen the broader topic come up in MeTa a few times and not liked some of the comments, so it wasn't about this example so much as something I thought was worth a little discussion. But yeah, I think you hit the crux of it.
posted by nthdegx at 9:03 AM on March 2, 2005

It seems clear that the real issue is a fundamental and obfuscatory misapprehension of the nature of community in a context where normative forms are subjective and personal, but their transgression results in public excoriation. It is in the nature of social beings to seek to identify with the party seen as "correct" and to reinforce this position by castigating those they see as "incorrect". When this is a matter of community debate, sub-communities sharing a consistent such definition will form, each seeing their own as the "core" community, each orienting to the others.

The iron filings of public opinion thus rustle and herd with and against each other - our ideas about "right action" and "self policing" forming dancing, shifting lines of polarity between poles of discursive force. What Rorschach Blot of community thus forms from these flowing fields lines of Filtering?
posted by freebird at 9:05 AM on March 2, 2005

Quonsar: Just the wimple or the whole habit?
posted by sohcahtoa at 9:23 AM on March 2, 2005

Is that about the entire situation summed up?

Almost, but you left out the part about how anyone who rudely asks for additional links for the sake of additional links, as this clearly was, is "making a berek of oneself." Other than that, gold!
posted by soyjoy at 9:52 AM on March 2, 2005

...flowing fields lines of Filtering?

I'm pretty sure my brain just exploded.
posted by boymilo at 9:52 AM on March 2, 2005

Metafilter: Making a berk of oneself.
posted by dash_slot- at 10:50 AM on March 2, 2005

The way I see it, I can spend endless hours on other web sites following wacky links on random subjects. I go to Metafilter to find the best of the web, as filtered by others. The fewer links there are in a posting, the greater the chance I will look at it. But that's just me.
posted by Triplanetary at 12:03 PM on March 2, 2005

dash_slot, my friend - berek!
posted by soyjoy at 1:19 PM on March 2, 2005

mathowie: I complained about the formatting. The other gentleman asked for additional content. He used the phrase "would have been interesting", where I perhaps would have said more interesting, as I was quite clearly interested. I don't know if that clears things up.
posted by Eideteker at 6:24 PM on March 2, 2005

berek:
member since: February 16, 2005
berek has posted no links 38 comments to MetaFilter
and no threads and 1 comment to MetaTalk
and no questions and 5 answers to Ask MetaFilter

nthdegx:
member since: August 3, 2002
nthdegx has posted 46 links and 521 comments to MetaFilter
and 9 threads and 317 comments to MetaTalk
and 13 questions and 193 answers to Ask MetaFilter

I know who I vote for.
posted by exlotuseater at 7:15 PM on March 2, 2005