Self-link ahoy

December 12, 2005 12:18 PM

This is the second time RonZ's linked to komar.org. The first time was to the halloween lights display and this time it's the christmas lights. If I recall correctly, the original poster of the christmas lights thing was outed as a self linker (although I can't find the thread) so I suspect it's a sock puppet at work.
posted by ooga_booga to Etiquette/Policy at 12:18 PM (35 comments total)

woo woo
posted by mischief at 12:21 PM on December 12, 2005

That was on MoFi, I think ooga.

Yep. Here's the thread. Same URL. Outed as a self-linker.
posted by tracicle at 12:22 PM on December 12, 2005

Hmm. It certainly seems possible, since he admits at MonkeyFilter that he could just make up a name and hide himself.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:26 PM on December 12, 2005

Thanks for the reminder, tracicle. I thought the same thing happened here on MeFi, although I may very well be mistaken about that.
posted by ooga_booga at 12:27 PM on December 12, 2005

good catch.
posted by andrew cooke at 12:27 PM on December 12, 2005

ooga_booga, internet detective.
posted by keswick at 12:39 PM on December 12, 2005

There's another one like this on the front page right now, as an exercise for the reader :)
posted by First Post at 12:44 PM on December 12, 2005

aaaand it's gone now...thanks.
posted by First Post at 1:01 PM on December 12, 2005

Maybe he's just a big fan of light displays.
posted by MrZero at 1:04 PM on December 12, 2005

woo woo ooga booga!


(okay, now I need to lie down.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 1:09 PM on December 12, 2005

woo woo
posted by shmegegge at 1:13 PM on December 12, 2005

Where is Bubb Rubb when you need him?
posted by Falconetti at 1:32 PM on December 12, 2005

aaaand it's gone now...thanks.

Huh? Still not deleted
posted by anastasiav at 1:45 PM on December 12, 2005

I think FirstPost is referring to this post, anastasiav.
posted by ooga_booga at 1:48 PM on December 12, 2005

Can we ban thanatopsis too? Please? Mebbe gift wrap the ban as a present to the MeFi community? Whaddya say?!
posted by xmutex at 1:49 PM on December 12, 2005

This one, actually. But wow, I guess it's happening a lot.
posted by First Post at 2:00 PM on December 12, 2005

Don't look now....
posted by IronLizard at 2:21 PM on December 12, 2005

He signed up a sock-puppet in June to post his Halloween lights in October. But first he posted 6 fairly well-received FPPs. I have doubts on this theory.
posted by smackfu at 2:26 PM on December 12, 2005

But first he posted 6 fairly well-received FPPs. I have doubts on this theory.

Yeah, I didn't post my typical "spammers should be slowly eviscerated with a rusty trowel" because I was unsure given those circumstances. But who knows, maybe he wants to both contribute and self-link.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:44 PM on December 12, 2005

I think it's more than likely this is just a guy that was following the story and posting a link to it. Look at his other posts, he references Rocky Mountain News a few times. That paper serves the denver and surrounding areas. So where is this Kumar fella at? Boulder. I'm going to go out on a limb and say RonZ is also living in that area.
posted by puke & cry at 3:12 PM on December 12, 2005

Far be it for me to debate the quality of RonZ's links, smackfu. Nonetheless, the whois information for RonZ's Watching Grass Grow link shows it to be registered to an Alek Komarnitsky. Alek provides "[e-mail]" as his contact information. Guess to whom komar.org is registered to? Alek Komarnitsky. That would make this his *third* self-link. This guy is an avowed self-linker and he seems to have learned that as long as he's not being too blatant about it, he can get away with it.
posted by ooga_booga at 3:12 PM on December 12, 2005

Ugh. That smells.
posted by cortex at 3:18 PM on December 12, 2005

well fuck me running. Hats off, ooga.
posted by puke & cry at 3:19 PM on December 12, 2005

See, now that's evidence.
posted by smackfu at 4:08 PM on December 12, 2005

I went ahead and checked the rest of RonZ's posts. Two of them are registered to "Art Smoot" and two more are his self-links. The remainder consist of a link to yahoo, a link to news.com, a link to Microsoft Earth and a link to a newspaper. "Art Smoot" is the technical contact for komar.org, linking him to Alek Komarnitsky. The offending self-linked FPPs are: here and here. It seems that the linksterbation has been going on for quite a while.
posted by ooga_booga at 4:09 PM on December 12, 2005

Man, what a scumbag.
posted by puke & cry at 4:11 PM on December 12, 2005

posted by scarabic at 4:17 PM on December 12, 2005

7 self-links? Good effort. That's got to be some sort of record: I wouldn't have thought it possible given the documented skills of the Junior Detective Gang.

/Doffs cap to RonZ, then cockpunches him
posted by blag at 4:34 PM on December 12, 2005

the account is banned.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:53 PM on December 12, 2005

Aw man, he totally used MoFi as a training ground for primetime. Nice detecting, ooga. :)
posted by tracicle at 4:59 PM on December 12, 2005

If he'd just had the sense to out himself and thank us for the traffic, he'd still be a member in good standing.
posted by languagehat at 5:14 PM on December 12, 2005

Shouldn't it be de rigeur to delete all a self-linker's links? I would think that it would follow since we can't trust any of the user's so-called "contributions" and that they very well may be self-links and RonZ seems to be a particularly egregious example of this phenomenon. That way, there's no benefiting from any actions which may have escaped scrutiny.

Thanks for the info too, languagehat. Now I know what xmutex was on about - and yes, thanatopsis should be banned too, in my book.
posted by ooga_booga at 5:33 PM on December 12, 2005

It's a type of intimate piercing, but it goes down the street instead of across the road.
posted by blag at 5:35 PM on December 12, 2005

What a loveable scamp!
posted by blue_beetle at 6:40 AM on December 13, 2005

ooga_booga has a good point: even though the post is taken off the front page, the self-linker still gets the benefit of the MeFi-link pagerank boost. Google will find this MetaTalk page, find the link to the post in question and then follow the the self-links back to the linkee's site. So, even though few people will click on the link, Google will still treat it as a link from a high-profile, high-traffic, high-PR site like MeFi and award them accordingly. Better to delete the link altogether, or at least remove the a href. But this does mean more work for Matt.

Some people may think that $5 is a small price to pay for a permanent link from MeFi to their homepage.
posted by blag at 9:21 AM on December 13, 2005