Should we Link to Content or Contain content?

Question

There have been a number of '[Game] [Craft/Class] Guide questions' today. While I think it'd be appropriate for those questions to be asked organically, I have an issue with the intentional 'seeding' of the questions because they produce a lot of unanswered questions with no indication that there's community to support asking such questions.

Other questions have dealt with whether or not these questions should exist, but my question is a bit more general:

Should we be a site that just links to other sites (much in the same way potential answers to the 'guide' questions would?)? Or in keeping with the SO tradition, should the authoritative answer exist on this site?

Answer 1

I agree with this question completely. The WoW community in specific has so many answers across so many sites because of the vastness of that community.

IMO, I think in the spirit of SO, we should be working to become the definitive source for answers to questions, not a ranked FFA link list.

Answer 2

I think the content should be on the site, at least the relevant portion with a link to the original article.

The point of these sites is for their contents to be indexed by Google, so I think it should be copied into answers.

Answer 3

From what I've seen of what are ranked good answers on SO, and what I've looked for when searching or asking a question, the ideal is that we end up with a summary answer (for the tl;dr crowd) that then links to other sites to provide in-depth explanation. An example of something good to link to might be a video demonstration of how to tackle the problem in question.

Answer 4

We should take an example from Elitist Jerks where they have really good sources of information for every question about WoW classes. Here's an example for an Affliction Warlock thread

Below I've copy+pasted an example of the info from just one thread! I would imagine if you split the parts up into separate answers all this info could be gathered within ONE question. However, rather than just linking to other sites, that link to yet another site, we should strive to get this kind of information gathered HERE.

1 General information
    1.1 Key Stats
        1.1.1 What do you mean by "starter gear"?
        1.1.2 What do those colors mean again?
    1.2 Common specs
        1.2.1 Dark Pact or Life Tap?
    1.3 Key talents
        1.3.1 Affliction
        1.3.2 Destruction
    1.4 Pets
        1.4.1 Pet food
        1.4.2 Pet Macroing
    1.5 Spells

2 Itemization
    2.1 How does item comparison work?
    2.2 Gems
    2.2.1 Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
    2.3 Socketing
    2.3.1 When to break the socket color?
    2.4 Gear
    2.5 Glyphs
    2.5.1 Glyph of Life Tap
    2.6 Enchants
    2.7 Professions
    2.8 Gear Optimization
        2.8.1 What is the optimal T7 equip for me?
        2.8.2 What is the optimal T8 equip for me?
        2.8.3 What's the best T9 gear compilation?
        2.8.4 What's the best T10 gear compilation?

3 General playing tips
    3.1 How much hit rating is best?
    3.2 Casting Sequence
         3.2.1 I reach 100% uptime just by clipping my dots, right?
         3.2.2 I could cast a Shadow Bolt, but CoA has only 1s left, what to do?
         3.2.3 What about temporary buffs/debuffs and dots?
         3.2.4 What is the optimal start?
    3.3 Can I have too much haste?
    3.4 The proper use of Drain Soul
    3.5 Rolling Corruption Crits and Modifiers
    3.6 Delaying Haunt
    3.7 Multiple targets
    3.8 Short fights and adds
    3.9 Is movement speed worth it?
    3.10 Useful addons

Answer 5

In my opinion, we should try, for short answers, to contain content, with a link to the source (if applicable).

If a question is too broad, it should be split-up per world/level, for example (read: Where are all the star coins in New Super Mario Bros. Wii vs. Where are the star coins in level 1-1 in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, with a CW linking those together.)

Also, containing basic content versus only a link will prevent link-rot (links can rot, content won't)