What’s the reason why we shared that article?

One of the readers of this blog posted an interesting comment that no explanations are needed when sharing articles. Simply sharing with like-minded people should be enough. The headline should stand for itself. I can see an argument for that. It’s like gift-giving. Often at birthdays we give gifts and there doesn’t always have to be an explicit reason why we picked a certain gift. Andreamv (the aforementioned reader) said, “As I just heard in a talk yesterday, what we share is how we define ourselves online.”

My response:

Good points, yes what we share is how we define ourselves online. But I would take that to another level and say how we share is how define ourselves online.

This reminds me of something the president of a company I interned for said in the late 90s. People would leave printouts of articles on his chair. A nice gesture, certainly. But he found himself with so much to read, I wanted to know why he should read certain articles. So he addressed the staff and asked people to put a sentence or two explaining why that article was worthwhile.

I believe the same thing holds to this day. While I appreciate people who share links, there’s just so many links, I would like to understand why some links in particular are worth reading. Perhaps the headline can explain why. But then sometimes I wonder if we have gotten to soo deep into consuming, that we have lost our way in processing what we consume to the point that we can’t explain why something is significant.

Do you think it’s good to leave a reason why you are sharing a particular article? Or is it enough to simply just give the link?