Since the Summer War and the creation of the Debate Room that quelled that war to an extent, there has been a cultural move within the forum to linking and citing sources for the support of one's argument, which is a natural part of the Debate Room paradigm. This is all well and good and I have nothing to say about this that I have not already said in the past. This cultural shift is anathema to creativity - in my opinion - but if this is what people want to talk about, so be it. What is troubling is that this cultural shift has given rise to a trend of original posts elsewhere in the forum, outside the Debate Room, that have nothing (or little) more than a bald link. This is really not acceptable in a writing forum. If you find something interesting across the net that has to do with our venue, you need to WRITE your reasons for having found interest in it, perhaps even quote a relevant portion of it, else not post. In future such threads will be removed as being below the forum standard for posting.
I think it is absolutely right. And even in the context of the debate room, a bald link, or the idea that you have to have a link to support everything said, is nonsense. When I see a post that has little or not comment and includes a link, I generally assume it is spam.
If this was prompted in part by my thread here: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/kind-of-like-this.137336/, my apologies, but the blog I linked to seemed to make the point without any comment from me. I saw it as just a 'food for thought' thing. Won't happen again, though.
