Context

Something I've noticed in almost 21 years of posting in this site is two broad patterns that poster tend to fall into:

- those who post supporting context along with their comments
- those who do not

Not everyone falls 100% into either of these buckets but it's fascinating/infuriating to see where those divides play themselves out, whether it's people directly referencing a specific Pitchfork review on the "Pitchfork sucks" thread without ever posting the review, people pronouncing a Supreme Court decision or a US political event/occurrence on the US politics thread good or bad without saying what the decision/event/occurrence actually is, or people gossiping about the validity of Doctor Who showrunner rumors without any links to the rumors. My questions for this thread:

- Do you provide context for your thread contributions or do you like to dive in with both feet and let people get the background for themselves?
- Assuming you do both, as most of us do, do you have a conscious process for deciding when to exclude/include context? If not, do you see a pattern behind why sometimes you give background and sometimes you don't?
- Does filling in foundational blanks bother you in online conversation or is it something you look forward to? Why?
- How necessary is context, anyway? Do you even care?

No

Context is everything but i think whether or not one would feel it necessary to set out the full context of your argument/comment in amy one instance depends and lot on.....well

If someone makes it clear what they are talking about, it's easy to find if there isn't a link or a quote and it's interesting enough.

The kind of posts I dislike are the gnomic fragments: someone restarts a thread saying, "So, this situation..." - end of post.

Get it sorted, sez u

I try to post a bandcamp link or something instead of just being all “new album” or whatever

pretty much only post on ile to defend fast food and act out

I post and wait for sic to arrive

yeah i only post context for music because i usually want to draw people to it.

with links it's not just transparently providing context, there's a transaction happening. i care much less about a media organization getting a click than i do about a bandcamp artist getting a play and potentially a purchase.

that's a subset of the 'context' discussion though.

I get aggravated at lack of context (much like Morbs used to) because it forces me to seek out the information, sometimes with a dearth of information that would make finding it easy, rather than having something to click in the thread.

over the years due to paywalls I've started to c&p text in block quotes more to prevent dumping links that nobody can read but me into the chat, but I fall short there sometimes.

I find linking to paywalled sites without c&p or screenshot bizarre, you have to assume majority of people on here will not have a subscription to any one site. Nobody wants to be the "hey that's paywalled" guy so everyone will ignore your link and move on.

the response to that is that some folks have referred to apps/browser extensions that get around the paywall. but i use a chromebook and the ones they have suck lol.

yeah that's ridiculous, not going to install an extension as much as I'm not going to subscribe to the new york times

The kind of posts I dislike are the gnomic fragments: someone restarts a thread saying, "So, this situation..." - end of post.

― Halfway there but for you, Monday, June 28, 2021 1:43 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ya I never do this. Maybe I’ll bump a thread with a “Yikes” or a “....” or 👀 but that’s more than enough context.

wow... interesting that this thread is posted today of all days... by DJP of all posters... very interesting... that's all i'll say about it..............