The thing I see a lot here and other places (and is something that drives me batty and to downvotes) is answers that are links to external sites, with some quotation, but no original content. We are not here to mirror Wikipedia, or Google, or any other Internet site. We are here to answer people's questions. If you can't do it in your own words with supporting quotes then you aren't trying hard enough.
One of SE's purposes is to make people better writers. You can't get better at writing if you aren't actually writing anything and are just copy and pasting things you find on the internet. If you're going to use outside sources (and you should) then remember: Every SE answer should be like a research paper.
Remember the things you learned in school about writing research papers.
- Use integrated quotations. Don't quote more than you need. Form a sentence around the quote you need and integrate it.
- Cite your sources (although if you aren't quoting this isn't as necessary, but it's still a good thing so people can find out more).
Make it clear you're quoting. If you're copy-pasting from the internet, use the quote syntax, don't make it look like something you took from the net is your own words. This is Plagiarism. In school this got you an F, on SE it gets your answer deleted and might get your accounts suspended.
Summarize where you can instead of quoting wholesale. this is important, instead of grabbing that 100 line quote, why not summarize the important stuff and use a smaller quote to make your point. This makes your answer much more readable.
Remembering these things and other will help your answer be better, and more importantly will help you be a better writer, which is what we're all really here for (even if we don't know it).
The issue I have with link only answers, in addition to everything above, is that those answers are useless if that link ever breaks (target site goes down or even just changes their link structure with no backwards compatibility). Without enough information about what the link was, the answer becomes completely useless and now makes this site worse instead of better.
In summary, link only answers and answer that just copy text wholesale are lazy. Don't be lazy, it deprives you of one of the primary benefits SE provides it's participants: becoming a better writer.
