Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 44,193
Likes: 6,428
From: New York, NY, and High Falls, NY, USA
Bikes: 1962 Rudge Sports, 1971 Raleigh Super Course, 1971 Raleigh Pro Track, 1974 Raleigh International, 1975 Viscount Fixie, 1982 McLean, 1996 Lemond (Ti), 2002 Burley Zydeco tandem
The topic comes up from time to time. The practice is known as "tying and soldering". The folklore that circulates in the bike world is that it makes the wheel ride more stiffly. This is untrue, though you may find a lot of people who defend the practice for that reason.
The origin is that breaking spokes used to let the spoke stick out and cause a worse accident, so tying and soldering would keep a broken spoke in place.