The community discussed this change several times over the past six months; now we are finally implementing it.

In the 10 days that the Ban Links proposition was stickied, it gathered 57 comments with 81% upvotes on 441 views. There wasn't a single comment against the proposal, just one person saying he won't post as much because he posts from his phone and it's too complicated. I would say we have overwhelming support. Effective immediately, you will now find a new rule in the sidebar:

Rule 6: No Link Posts -- Only editable submissions made with the "Discuss" button are allowed. "Link" submissions have been banned by the community for the reasons described here. Link posts will be immediately removed.

We are a research subverse, seeking rigorous, well-thought out, sourced submissions that advance the pizzagate investigation. While they are handy for sharing news, most Link post titles don't meet our submission requirements. The vast majority of posts we have to remove are Links.

Six Reasons "Link" submissions suck for v/Pizzagate research

1. They can't be edited to meet our submission rules, and frequently have to be removed because of this
2. They can be used by trolls to direct-link to dangerous sites (examples in Removed Submissions)
3. They make it easy for trolls to spam "PGisStupid" style memes and shitty YouTube videos
4. They make it impossible for authors to edit posts to incorporate the often stellar crowdsourced research contributed by other users in the Comments.
5. When shared off-platform such as by retweet, especially by phone where only headlines show depending on screen settings, they inadvertantly bury the crowdsourced analysis and discoveries that shed light on events mentioned in MSM articles, destroying the redpill value. Non-Voat users clicking a Voat submission shared in a tweet, will probably click the headline, taking them directly to the MSM article (for example) and never see the crowdsourced analysis in the Comments.
6. It seems unfair and inconsistent to require Discuss posts to provide short descriptions of all linked content and their relevance under Rule 3, but allow Link posts that only have a headline from which such matters must often be inferred.

Hopefully, our developer @Heygeorge will also soon be able to tweak our CSS to remove the Link button. Until then, please resist the temptation to submit with it.

Soon, PuttItOut is supposed to institute a referendum system that will allow us to easily revisit the ruleset, so we can consider this an experiment we can change later, if the consensus after trying it is negative.

You are still welcome to share Links in v/pizzagatewhatever, v/pizzagatememes, v/news, and v/whatever.

Looking forward to many excellent Discuss posts!