Am I the only one who finds the practice of answering a query by posting a link to another site or blog, most infuriating?
I do not want to leave this site to find out the answer to a question. Also it makes responding to an answer to a query far more difficult and downright impossible at times.
There are shades of opinion about most areas of gardening and it is often the discussion which follows on from a question and answer which is more use than possibly the original answer on its own could ever be.
no, you're not on your own..we've talked about this lots, it's a discussion forum :)
Yes, me too. I think that any link should be an addition to a reply not just the answer itself. Another even worse reply I've seen in many forums but not this site thank goodness is simply being told to go away and Google for the answer. Like Palustris said, it is the ensuing discussion, debate, disagreement that puts life into any forum.
I agree, but there are a couple of questions that are continuously asked... It's very easy for "oldies" to feel pestered by the same question time & time again by "Newbies". As I've been around here for a year, I'm perfectly placed between the 2! And pride myself in still asking stupid questions... But I generally Google first.
Occasionally, an answer could've been found easily by Googling, and it's simply laziness that has prevented the person posting from searching.
Anyone here ever heard of SIAL? (It's related to this, but in a car way).
Not sure if I'm clear what the problem is here! For example, if TeeGee puts a link to something on his site, rather than writing it out again, or copying and pasting, I find that really helpful and certainly better than not getting an answer!
Also, I think it's a sign of people's faith in the knowledgeable members here that they prefer to ask a question here before googling.
But as I said I do not want to go to Tee Gee's site. I want to read the answer HERE, so that I can respond to it HERE. Then others can chip in HERE with their opinions. If this Tee Gee person can paste and copy then where is the difficulty in doing it from one place to another? My original posting was not specifically about anyone person in particular nor about this site alone.
As for the Google thing, well that was not in my original comment.
I used to find it slightly annoying but it has become less of an issue for me since I went onto broadband. I think it is a relevant point though since not everyone has the luxury/option of a broadband connection.
This doesn't bother me. A link opens a new window, which I can easily close to go back to A4ALL.
I don't agree with cutting and pasting from other sites. Tee Gee can do it of course, because he'd cut and paste from his own site, but there are copyright issues when pasting from other sites. It annoys me when I see images from my website used without permission, especially if no link is provided back to my site.
I recently included a quote myself in a message, but although I mentioned which site I was quoting from, I now feel I should have included a link too. After all, the internet is all about links between websites, and I must have arrived to A4ALL via a link from another site in the first place!
Also, many links from A4all to other sites are to pages with visuals, which can be very useful for answering questions like for example how to build a tunnel cloche.