There have been many threads in the News and Politics section which seem to just be a link and some quoted text, with no commentary from the OP. Many other forums I've been on have had rules that OPs have to have some text of their own about the news topic to facilitate discussion, and that an OP can't just be a news story someone quoted. Might this be a good rule for this forum?
I don't see the problem with it. The person is just bringing up some relevant topics to the forum. I don't see why they need to add their 2 cents in. They're just opening up the topic to be discussed.
Mostly what Lance said. as long as the mods don't mind I don't see it as a horribly big deal. Though I personally wouldn't submit a news article without posting my own thoughts on it, cause I do agree that is the best way to encourage in depth posts and kick off the discussion itself. Seems to me like the most sensible thing to do if it's an issue relevant enough to myself and the community that I'm posting it here in the first place.
No. In fact I prefer it when the first post is just the story report and is 'neutral' - discussion can follow after.
^ That. I enjoy not having a thread start with a "YAY!" or a "HELL NO". It gives the opportunity for people to voice their opinion without feeling like they're invading a thread.
Discussion usually follows naturally after the story is posted, so I don't think we really need the OPs to facilitate it by sharing their opinion. And like Ridiculous and Tim, I like it when the OP doesn't share their opinion immediately; it's let's the conversation develop more naturally.
I don't see any reason why it should be required for OP to have to say anything. As others said, I think its better if the OP doesn't put their bias into the discussion.
As long as it's quoted appropriately, we don't have a problem with people sharing relevant news stories.
I think other forums may do this to prevent spammy posts -- a lot of bots or spammers will post "newsy" stuff so they can append a link for whatever crap they're promoting -- but we have a combination of an amazing community and super-on-the-ball moderators who identify spammy posts almost immediately, so we don't have that sort of need. Also, the news posts here are pretty much all relevant to LGBT issues in one way or another, and so they further one of our core purposes, while on other forums, the news topics may be on a much wider range of issues, so there it may make sense to require some sort of commentary to show relevance to the community. As Ben said, the staff team has never had an issue with these sorts of posts, and I'd add that I think they can often contribute to awareness in the community, even when the news posts don't get any additional comments. So, speaking for myself, I don't see any reason to change things, as what we've got seems to be working pretty well.