
Ask HN: Why not link AND text? xor vs. or [meta] - franciscop
It is becoming quite a common thing (specially with the Show HN) that when you submit a link you&#x27;d also submit a comment explaining more about what you made, relevance to HN, specific questions, etc. So my question is simple:<p>When you submit a story you can choose &quot;url&quot; or &quot;text&quot;, but why not both? What are the disadvantages of just setting them as optional? (and requiring at least one)<p>Meta: I&#x27;d suggest changing the &quot;or&quot; to &quot;xor&quot; to display this mutual exclusivity. Or just leave it as &quot;or&quot; and allow both
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skylark
When links and text are available together, many of the top level comments
will be direct responses to the original poster's text rather than discussion
about the link itself.

By forcing the original poster to follow the same commenting rules, it greatly
cleans up the top level discussion by confining direct responses to the poster
in their own tree.

This is one of the reasons why the AskReddit subreddit moved to the headline-
only model: It encourages people to share their own stories at the top level
rather than respond to the poster, whose comment also needs to be able to
stand on its own merits rather than get a default high visibility position.

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throwawaynnn
Totally makes sense. Where can I learn more about things like that?

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CM30
Have to be honest, I've wondered why Reddit doesn't do this. Seems like a
simple change that'd open up a lot of possibilities for aggregators.

Especially given how many popular posts have a top rated comment by the author
which does nothing more than explain stuff that could have been explained in
the post itself (had the service given them room to do so).

