Writing logs directly to InfluxDB is a viable alternative to using syslog or the Telegraf plugin, as explained by Noah Crowley in an article published on DZone. The article delves into how syslog works and its role when used with Telegraf, which converts messages to line protocol for writing to InfluxDB. Crowley demonstrates that writing data directly to InfluxDB is possible, following a specific schema. To optimize performance, it's recommended to batch large numbers of points before sending them to the database.