reply on: Give the dead horse another whack \ stacker news ~meta

I would also be in the camp of optional additional field when posting a link.

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.

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

Well said. Yours should have been the OP