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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?
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 would also be in the camp of optional additional field when posting a link.
Here's an example post.
  • With this post, I wanted to post a link as well as an explainer about it, out of respect for the readers time. And to help identify if it is worth a click or not.
  • Yes it could have been a discussion post, but that defeats the purpose of having a clickable link up there.
  • Instead, I had to post to SN before drafting a comment. That comment took 10-15mins to create after the post went live. Potentially lost eyeballs.
  • Yes the 1st comment could have been drafted in markdown off the site, but it would have been much more convenient to have drafted it together with the original listing.
  • It is actually a preferable experience for the reader to get a digest of what the link is about, if they want to click on the title.
  • It doesn't need to be mandatory but the absence of a description field makes most posters not even consider creating a comment of any kind.
  • It is then up to the community to fill that vacuum of summarising the link or providing context. Is that the intention? I'm not sure it is.
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I agree with @siggy47.
Very good points. I especially liked:
Instead, I had to post to SN before drafting a comment. That comment took 10-15mins to create after the post went live. Potentially lost eyeballs.
it would have been much more convenient to have drafted it together with the original listing.
the absence of a description field makes most posters not even consider creating a comment of any kind.
I'll create a ticket :)
edit: here it is
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Well said. Yours should have been the OP
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