Sociology hiring committee question: what's the role of uploading writing samples? Sharing unpublished work, of course. But what's the marginal effect of adding something already published? People can just follow the cites/links in a candidate's CV, right?

From my experience in Uni P&T committee, the writing samples are part of the presented portfolio the candidate wants external reviewers to evaluate. The reviewers can't be expected to read anything else so it's up to the candidate to present a selection to make the best case for their promotion.

As others say when you are reviewing 100s of files, helpful to have everything in one place. You should include what you most want people to read. Sole or first author. If you have more than the usual max of 3, helpful to post everything else in an easy place.

Tells you what to read, for people with longer records.

You want control of your narrative (“I am a scholar of”) so giving the committee selected publications is better; also, people are lazy as any UX person will tell you; also, don’t assume libraries have subscriptions to everything (we don’t have access to some journals).