As I try to steer a course between providing too much information and too little, let me attempt to explain what I plan to institute as a general policy with regard to links in my posts. I provide links to other sites for various purposes: to give credit where it is due, to provide resources for further exploration of a subject, and/or because I think I can't do justice to the source with a few excerpts. At the request of several of my readers, what I will try to do is provide enough information within my own post to make it informative and perhaps interesting, providing links for the above-mentioned purposes but not expecting the majority of my readers to follow them. When I do think a link is particuarly important, I'll make that clear.
I've been thinking about the subject recently, as the amount of information that comes my way continues to expand exponentially. I like to think of myself as an aggregator for my friends and family, passing on important ideas, worrisome trends, and interesting stories that others might not find; I know that I am grateful to people who provide that service for me. But I also know that merely being sent a link is no longer particularly helpful. If I don't know something about the subject, and what's more important, what the sender himself thinks about the link he has sent, I find I'm less and less likely to check it out. Too much information, too little time. Since many of my readers have less time than I do, I'll try to provide better service here.Thanks. I think it would also help me if you put some descriptive word (like the article title) where the link is rather than just "here" or the title of the blog entry you want us to read. It might seem clear to you, but when going to a new blog format and looking at an entry where the relevant information is halfway down, it can be confusing whether one is in the right place or not. (I'm thinking specifically of the Invitation to Conversation post.)
