Really? Because it says so right in the topic creation form..
Of course, users never read any words on the screen, as we well know. No need to prove a point that’s been proven zillions of times.
This is a “reddit-alike” feature, to make it easy to start a topic along the lines of
Holy cow! Did y’all see this crazy article on this crazy website?!
Try going to reddit and ‘starting a topic’ – they’re usually based on links from other sites. This way it’s faster to start a new topic with just a link.