Once upon a time, the Indie Hackers forum supported link posts. It was a simple way to share a link without additional commentary, with the benefit that anyone who clicks it from the forum will be taken directly to the link.
I removed this functionality during a big forum rewrite, in part to focus on discussion posts. But discussion posts are doing great, and I'd like to add some more variety to the mix by bringing link posts back.
More specifically, discussion posts can get a bit stale over time, as similar topics and questions reappear from month to month. They also tend to limit conversation a bit. If something interesting happens elsewhere on the web, link posts make it trivially easy to share and see what other indie hackers think about it.
The risk with link posts is that they're so easy to make that they risk flooding the /newest feed. And, in my opinion, they're only as valuable as the discussion they generate.
For now, link posts are open to people with 20+ points, in which case you can make them by clicking the link icon when creating a post. I might lower that later. Let's see how it goes!