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References give credibility to facts you present in a post.  It is up to you as the post author how credible you want to make your facts, versus how much trouble you want to go thru for that credibility.

There are various factors that effect the credibility of a statement in the minds of your readers:<ol>

<li>Your reputation in the specific field.

<li>How widely know or easily corroborated the statement is.

<li>How plausible the statement is.

<li>Whether there is any known controversy in the area.

<li>Whether you have supplied evidence corroborating the statement, and then how plausible that evidence is.

<li>Whether you have supplied references corroboarting the statement, and then how plausible those references are.

</ol>

Again, its up to you how much you want to bother making your statements more credible.  If readers think your statements are not credible, then they may disregard anything else you say, ask for additional corroboration like evidence or references, and/or possibly downvote if they think you're making stuff up and essentially committing intellectual fraud.

For example, if your argument hinges on the fact that ducks can float on water, then merely stating <i>"since ducks can float on water ..."</i> is good enough.  That fact is widely known and easily corroborated.

If, however, your argument hinges on rocks floating on water, then just <i>"since rocks float on water ..."</i> is going to get you ignored, downvoted, and laughed out of town.  A reference showing that certain types of pumice or hollow rocks can float on water would help.  The quality of the reference also matters.  A peer-reviewed scientific paper classifying types of volcanic rocks is going to be a whole lot better than a web site that talks about how aliens live in volcanoes.