[Stephen Gerringer]

Good question, Shaheda.

A bibliography suggests an article that’s being shared (whether yours or someone else’s). If the references in the bibliography are to web pages, feel free to go ahead with the raw links. Just be aware it might not post immediately, as that will require manual approval, and I’m not always on online. In fact, I’ve had tech issues that sidelined me most of the past 24 hours, though that seems to be resolved now (sometimes a laptop update simply goes awry).

Unfortunately, every day our website is probed for vulnerabilities by automated hackers, and our first priority has to be security. Our tech team recently changed and strengthened our security plug-in, and I’m still trying to get a handle on that. Seems that even hyperlinks are now requiring approval. As posts and participants continue to increase, I hope we can move beyond having to manually approve each such post, which makes me a choke point slowing the spontaneous flow of conversation.

As we grow, we’ll likely add other active moderators, which should speed that process, but we don’t have the traffic to justify that yet.

But apart from the need to authorize posts, one good reason for hyperlinking is that the person posting the link can click on the gear icon and select the option for the link to open in a new window. Especially if you have multiple links, it’s then easier to refer to the original post while checking out the link in a new window, rather than being pulled off site and having to continually navigate back and forth between the link and the post.

However, we are still feeling our way, trying to figure out the smoothest flow, so for now just do the best you can, using whichever method works, and be patient with me.

Thanks!