osteophage | Link Culture

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on March 19, 2019.]

While putting together a massive compilation of links recently, one of the things I got to thinking about, as you might expect, was about how some sites were easier to collect examples from and follow the conversation on than others. The forums were, of course, the best. The most customizeable search function, plus the threaded nature of, you know, threads, made it really easy to find what I was looking to find. As for the Tumblr posts, I mostly either had to have those handed to me directly or else only found them because I knew exactly whose blogs and tags to look through -- and each individual post or reblog chain seemed to stand as an island, with nothing to directly connect it to any others. So because we've also talked about site dialect and culture, now I'm also wondering: What about a culture of links?

Right now, Wordpress has automated pingbacks that seem to encourage the practice, and I don't know what the situation is on other places like Dreamwidth, but to me it seems like Tumblr posts, for instance, tend to be comparatively barren of links, even in long, contemplative posts where having more links would make sense.

Of course I recognize that there are pros and cons here. The reason why I have a favorable outlook on having lots of links partly has to do with how it makes it easier to branch out from one post and find similar or related posts, for one thing -- and sometimes that's a lot better than a general tag search. But I also don't mean to, uh, overhype them. Links obviously require having something to link to. It's not always going to be necessary or relevant. And in some cases, it can even be considered rude, or too close to "calling someone out," if you're framing another person's post in a negative light or as an example of a problem. That particular issue becomes even more high stakes on Pillowfort, with its intentional rule against that.

Still, I'm thinking about things like Siggy's tags on this post, where he mentioned, "I sure wish tumblr people would actually link people to relevant discussions." Understand, this is far from the first time I've seen people say something like that, just the one example I happen to have on hand. In that post, the original poster is talking about a real intracommunity problem, and that's fine, and they don't link directly to examples of what they're talking about, so you have to take their word for it, which is also fine... It just means that if you want to see for yourself, you'd have to followup and ask. And if you're five or ten years down the line and none of the same users are active anymore...

Note I thought about how I could be replicating this same dynamic myself by not including any links in this very post, so I'm linking an example that's recently come up. I don't think not-linking is a bad thing, it just has different conveniences -- and will make more or less sense depending on what you want. In this case, what I want is for people to get to form their own impression in addition to my summary. I'd also like people to be able to find similar metacommentary on different sites if they like, and also not have to ask me what a pingback is.

Here are my general questions for y'all:

What did linking practices look like on the sites you've been on before? How does Pillowfort compare? Do you think there are automated/platform things that could make it easier, or things we're doing (or could) do as users? Have you been in any situations before where you've wished a post had more links? What kinds of situations -- like on what topics, what kinds -- were those?