When I signed up for this site, I expected to engage in interesting back-and-forth with well-educated, well-read, writers. As writers, I figured the people I encountered here would realize that when you write a factual article, even an editorial, it is necessary to include facts.

This is true even in reply to an article that includes factual material, if one wishes to pose a counter-argument. You must back up your argument or it is just a hollow shell of an opinion and not worth the memory space it is stored in.

I've seen many, many people here claim to back up their theories and opinions with "facts" in the form of links to other sites. These are not facts! They are lists of places where I might go and GET facts, but they are not facts themselves!

Listen stupid, links aren't information! And they're not good writing!

As writers, when we write about non-fiction, we become REPORTERS. We can write editorials, but we must still REPORT. To report something is to read all the information yourself, SYNTHESIZE IT, and report it back in such a way that the general public can read your article and know some substantial portion of the information you learned by doing the research. Then, if you want to provide links where I can go and verify your sources, or read further on the topic, that's a wonderful thing!

Readers want to read information, not a list of places to go get information. Links are not informative and they cannot substitute for good, fact-filled reporting. Let's all try to be better writers and let's all try harder to do the leg-work necessary to be better writers.