I love softlinks. They can be extremely useful and accomplish many things. Uh oh, I feel a list coming on.
- Connect the dots. No one has all the information that you have. If you know of something that adds to or is related to a node, show it to the others reading that node! Other people have already shown you! Chances are that's how you arrived where you are in the first place!
ie: if you see that someone has written a node about gentrification, take it upon yourself to softlink Wicker Park as an example of such.
- Free nodevertising. Not the seedy kinds of self promotion, like throwing your shit around in the chatterbox and such. If you have a previous write-up you think lends something to another one, showcase it there. Its all good.
ie: Go ahead, its perfectly acceptable to add a segway to your node about Frank Zappa's poignant songwriting underneath someone else's description of songs that send shivers down their spine.
- Play on words. There are so many different spellings, different opinions and double meanings for things, why not exploit them all through softlinking. I mean, I am not advocating being an asshole about it but no one is going to stop you.
ie: so someone softlinked cunnilingus to things that taste good with macaroni and cheese. so what. rule!
- Make a point. Again, there are nice ways and not so nice ways to do this. I guess both ways have merit, if you really want to be a jerk, but you don't have to do that to make a bold statement.
ie: I may be a Mac user but I certainly don't take it personally when I arrive at a node like the most hideous evil in the universe is right here in my living room and see the gratuitous softlinking of various Macintosh nodes down below.
- Give the noder some feedback. Softlink directly in response to the node. Softlinks can be a great alternative to simply voting something down which will result in nothing and will likely go unnoticed. You can often convey alot more about how you really feel without hurting someone's XP by adding an anonymous and poignant softlink.
ie: I mean, if you see something that is full of crap, why not go right ahead and add a "this is full of crap" softlink to their node. Hey, you may think that is crass but I don't care. I often create custom softlinks for this exact purpose when I feel I want to say something about a particular node. I mean come on, voting things down is getting so passe´, don't you think? If you've got something to say, say it!
Softlinks rule.