I think this rule encourages trolling. In the past people needed to give their views relevant to the article they posted. Now they can just drop a news article without the need to give their views & then sit back and watch the dung bomb explode from a safe distance untouched by any of the stuff from the fan.
Nobody changed this rule, it's always been this way since I've been here.
The reasoning was that it would prevent people from re-quoting the entire article every time they wanted to respond to the OP.
We were getting threads where almost every post on the first page requoted the ENTIRE article.
Makes for tedious scrolling. Now they can just quote the person's comments (like everyone else who comments after the article).
The point of this forum is for people to post news articles so that others can comment on it.
There is no requirement that they themselves HAVE TO comment on it.
If they are found to be trolling, we will deal with that as it arises.