Embedding/Linking to audio

Question

Hey guys,

Do you think we need a policy on links to external audio files? Obviously as we're dealing with production we're going to end up with people asking things like "Why does my mix sound flat?"/whatever, and I think we're going to see a lot of people posting links to the track on SoundCloud or rapidshare etc.

Should we be encouraging this kind of thing?

I think that on one hand it will encourage more specific questions and answers, but on the other hand it leaves us open to people abusing the site as a place to get some attention for their music (this happens a lot on forums, I'm guessing it'll happen here).

I also know that on StackOverflow posting links to external code is generally frowned upon, but it's a lot easier to condense code down to a few lines for a question than it is for audio !

Answer 1

I think we should be encouraging audio samples relevant to questions. SO has a facility for pasting code in as an answer. The photography folks can insert an image. There is no media player for us (feature request for the SE folks), so we should insert links to the audio files when necessary.

If someone makes a post saying, "Check out my new band!" without any relevant question, then that is no different if someone on Webmasters says, "check out my new website!" and should be closed as not a real question or voted down.