Adding relevant links to existing posts

Question

What do you guys think about adding relevant hyperlinks to questions and answers?

For example, if someone asks about hygiene in certain country, an answer could include quality of water, restaurant cleanliness and such. Adding info on water quality from UN site or a blog post about someones experience in a restaurant regarding hygiene is what I had in mind for hyperlinking. Adding links to outside websites (official government or organization data, blogs, articles) would in my opinion be useful as it would allow readers to learn a bit more than what the answer is providing.

I will add that kind of link to my posts but was wondering whether others would mind if someone else edited their posts for the sole purpose of adding a relevant/interesting link.

Answer 1

If you're editing in order to provide sources for facts already stated in the answer, do it. That's one of the reasons we allow editing: to improve answers and make them more complete.

If you're editing to provide new information, you might be better off just creating a separate answer.

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If someone edits incorrect information into a post, or deviates from the original intent of the person who posted the question or answer, the post owner can roll back the revision and the community can adjust their votes (each time the post is edited, you are allowed to change any vote you may have cast).

If you want to add a comment asking if the OP minds you adding in information, that's fine for the sake of politeness, but it is not at all required.

Answer 2

If you find information that can supplement a question/answer, it's common courtesy to ask the OP in a comment to include it in their post. It's okay to edit, format, and rearrange a post, and I have done so on many occasions, but I would think twice before including new information (which includes links) without the poster's consent. Occasional link to Wikipedia or similar is probably fine though.

If the OP doesn't respond to your request at all (inactive user, for example), then I guess it's okay to include new and relevant information, seeing as probably nobody would mind.

Answer 3

I would not do it. This is about reciprocity. I would not appreciate either if someone in my own posts. Correcting a typo is fine, but anything further is out of scope. For me it's a matter of respect.

Rather than fiddling about others' answers I would rather suggest an alternative answer of my own, with links or whatever I think is missing. Then the readers can decide via the voting mechanism.