Seems a bit of a tempest in a teapot. I responded Over There in tedious detail, here I'll just repeat that people have different styles of communicating, and one that people use to some degree is to speak through the words of others. Some people find that offputting, but I understand that there can be several reasons for it, among them that the quoted material says it better than you could have, or that it says it well enough that paraphrasing would be a gratuitous exercize.

And, as you point out, sometimes paraphrasing can be seen as obscuring the source of an idea or position. I think it leans in the proper direction, in favor of honesty, to quote the material that contributed to your own thinking, rather than paraphrase and risk people getting the impression that you're trying to plagiarize somebody else.

However, I do think that the mute "here" link is taking things to extreme. The subject line provides some context (but then, often the subject line is the linked item's title in quotes, removing any personal contributation at all). Lack of context can sometimes be confusing in situations when the link is contrarian, for example when you link to something outrageous by some Leftie extremist--are you endorsing it or condemning it? We who know you can reliably interpret (like the sun rising in the morning), but a newbie might find it confusing.

Another small problem with mute "here" links is that there's no calibration of the degree to which you agree or disagree with the linked piece. The link is binary, sort of an all-or-nothing thing, implying that you totally 100% agree with it (or totally, absolutely, hate the contrarian material). Is that always the case? I'd be surprised, so how about sharing your own opinion of the opinion?

Still, it's hardly a life-or-death or matter. That some percentage of your posts consist only of a "here" link is more than balanced by the lengthy posts in which you fully and exhaustively express yourself. If you incorporate some of this feedback, fine, if not, fine too.

I've been meaning to talk to you about another matter, the way you've started a lot of threads on Flame apparently in anticipation that they'll get passionate and might lead to flaming. Methinks you worry too much, and methinks I'm largely to blame for having lowered the boom and come down like a ton of bricks and pulled the brake cord and generally splattered cliches everywhere, in response to some heated arguments in the past. Mea culpa, I've overreacted in the past, and the legacy seems to be cramping people's style a bit today. I expect heated arguments on Current Events given the nature of the usual subject matter, and I worry that preemptive posting on Flame will starve CE of oxygen to keep the debating fires raging.

Sure, the line between a heated argument and a personal flame is a vague one. Unlike scientific debate, in political debate people are expressing their own subjective opinions and tend to be held personally responsible for their opinions. It's impossible to separate personalities completely, and trying leads to such contortions as "all Liberals are [blank], present company excepted." Yeah, right. C'mon, we all know that that's a bit disingenuous, no less when I do it than when you do it. Trying too hard to be civil leads to intellectual dishonesty; we have to find a balance closer to the middle where we can be honest without burning bridges and destroying the social fabric.

I'm sometimes in an awkward position in my dual roles here. When I tell you to knock off the insults, I'm not speaking as a moderator, I'm speaking as a member of the offended group, expressing my sense of offense. I think it's healthier if we dispense with the circumlocutions and debate what we sometimes are really thinking: You think I'm an America-hating Commie symp Liberal, I think you're a crypto-fascist authoritarian conservative. Given that you and I are living archetypes of the political battle lines today, how can we avoid getting personal and still honestly debate the great issues of the day?

There's an illustration of the lines there: It might be within-bounds to call you a "crypto-fascist authoritarian conservative" on Current Events, but it crosses the line if I gratuitously throw in "asshole". (For purposes of illustration only, I'm not smarmily trying to slip in the insult under the cover of a discussion of moderation.) The political category label can be rationally debated, but "asshole" is just cheap trash talk.

Category lines have blurred a lot in recent months. This topic is probably more appropriate on Community, but what the heck, here on OffTopic will work out just fine too. It'll be only a small self-referential irony if we conclude we need to tighten up categorization and this shouldn't have been here after all.