Should we be adding DNDBeyond links to old posts?

Question

DNDBeyond is Wizards of the Coast's official 5e digital support site/tool. It contains a rules compendium, monster listings, spell and item descriptions, and space for homebrew spells/items/races/feats/&c.

Many old(er) dnd-5e questions do not link to DNDBeyond, as it didn't exist at the time. We have affirmed that it's perfectly fine to link to DNDBeyond in questions, generally noting that its non-SRD content is behind no more of a paywall than the printed products themselves.

Recently some editors have been making good-faith edits to add DNDBeyond links where there were none before. That hadn't caught my eye until someone pointed out to me that the texts that made their way into DNDBeyond don't always perfectly match printed texts. [I don't have any examples at hand: readers please feel free to add a few examples.]

Should we be adding DNDBeyond links to questions where the author didn't include them?

Answer 1

The point of editing (particularly of somebody else's post) should be to make things clearer. I don't think the specifics, of whether it's adding a link to D&D Beyond, or adding a page number, or whatever, is really the question here. If editing is adding an irrelevant detail then it's probably unnecessary, though I don't see as it does any harm other than perhaps bumping an old post that probably didn't need to be bumped. If editing makes it clearer what the post is trying to say by providing a reference for what the author was looking at, then it's probably helpful and that's the whole purpose of editing.

I think it's important that any prospective editors, though, be absolutely certain that what they're doing is providing a reference for what the author was looking at and not just trying to hyperlink every rules reference on the site. Editing needs to be looked at on an individual basis: All problems with the post should be addressed at once, and it's important to realize that what the author was looking at may not be what the current version in D&D Beyond says. I know that at times I've been quite confused when reading a question (like this one) where I couldn't figure out why it was being asked because the answer was quite obvious to me, but it turns out that my copy of the book had been updated with the answer and the question was from before that updated printing.

So, if an edit makes a post clearer (which could be done by adding references to D&D Beyond or by rephrasing a confusing sentence) then it's probably helpful, and if it doesn't make a post clearer then it isn't. But I don't think that the guiding principle here is really anything specific to adding D&D Beyond links.

Answer 2

Adding links to DNDBeyond has the potential to make a question somewhat nonsensical. We have a lot of questions where the answer was "that wording was ambiguous/confusing, here's the errata". If a question of that variety has a link to DNDBeyond in it, with its updated wording, someone reading the question may end up going "the answer is right there in the question, what is this question even about?"

Is this a major problem? Not really. But it does represent a larger issue, which is: We shouldn't be editing old posts carelessly. We have a lot of questions and answers which turn on a single word, so unless you're certain that you're not changing the meaning of something, you should probably leave it alone.

Answer 3

In general, I would suggest not editing a lot of old posts this way, for the following reasons:

1. Editing old questions would bump them on the front page.
   • This would see unnecessary new answers to old already-answered questions; "thread necromancy", as they call it on forums.
   • It would clutter the front page with questions that don't need answering.
2. D&D Beyond links are mainly of use to askers/answerers of new, currently open questions who benefit from the ability to quickly and easily verify information (perhaps in a book they don't own) before answering or accepting. While links may still be of use to readers for convenience, I'm not sure it's worth a high number of bumped threads.
3. I'd be concerned that users would expend a lot of effort modifying old posts for XP rather than asking/answering questions.