I've been of the opinion lately that opinionists on a lot of the online websites are either A) there to make strawman arguments that can easily be knocked down to make the reader feel smug or B) there to make outlandish statements to get pageviews. I'm not going to name any sites in particular, but there are a lot of them that are just outright crazy.

I find the opinion pieces in my local papers much better for two reasons. One, the writers tend to acknowledge that there are nuances to issues and are willing to take a more moderate stance on things. Two, and more importantly, they tend to have at least some kind of background that is at least tangently related to the issue being discussed. Think teachers speaking about taxes that affect schools, city developers talking about zoning issues, etc. Online? Doesn't seem so much so.

As a result, I tried to avoid sharing opinion pieces on Hubski, and I only do if I think it'll lead to an interesting discussion and I tend to tag them as #opinion when I do, so people know what they are.