Back in June of 2008 (5 years ago), in the old Legal & Political (L&P) forum, we were being beset by folks posting full articles and links to articles and/or videos, without even bothering to write anything about why they posted such.
It became real confusing, as some folk thought the stuff was posted for one reason, when a few posts (and in some cases, a lot of posts) later, the person who dropped this stuff in the thread (or more often started the thread) came by and said many if us were wrong... We obviously were thinking X when he was posting Y!
Since the poster didn't bother to tell anyone about Y, what were the rest of us supposed to think? The bickering and back-biting continued until the Bluesman and I put our feetses down and created the
Drive-By Posting Rule.
We carried that rule through the demise of the old L&P to the creation of the Law & Civil Rights (L&CR) forum. And we enforced it brutally.
Somewhere along the way, people somehow thought that it was cool to post this kind of stuff everywhere else on TFL, except the L&CR forum. After some lengthy discussions among the Staff, we made the rule a general rule, all across the TFL forums.
To put it bluntly:
Expecting people to follow your link or read the article, without any remarks by you, and discussing the event, shows an utter lack of respect for the rest of the members here at TFL, who have come to expect intelligent conversation. In other words, it is rude.
And that, my friends, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story.