Penalize Self-Linking

February 15, 2006 7:25 PM

Metafilter is not doing enough to penalize self-links. Pile-ons are not a deterrent, as they only provide affirmation to offenders who believe there is no such thing as bad publicity. No doubt Mitchell Rose of Red Red Rose Pictures is already patting himself on the back for a jorb well done, and despite the deletion of his spam, he has still succeeded: previously deleted threads are still indexed by search engines, thus continuing to provide incentive to perpetrators even if their malice is detected and hidden from the front page. I suggest adding a robots exclusion META NOFOLLOW tag to the head of any thread which has been deleted.
posted by brownpau to etiquette/policy at 7:25 PM (29 comments total)

I suggest for offending self-link posts to remove them entirely from the site.
posted by xmutex at 7:27 PM on February 15, 2006

Pile-ons may not be a deterrent, but they sure are fun.
posted by aburd at 7:54 PM on February 15, 2006

Or just delete the links, so there's nothing to follow.
posted by smackfu at 7:55 PM on February 15, 2006

Good call, it has been implemented. All deleted posts have a noindex, nofollow meta tag.
posted by mathowie at 7:56 PM on February 15, 2006

Send 'em grouse hunting with Cheney.
posted by mischief at 7:56 PM on February 15, 2006

I'd been punishing them by purchasing their products/services. Oops, my bad.
posted by allen.spaulding at 7:59 PM on February 15, 2006

Cool. It's important to consider the holistic picture of what motivates these fucks. Being piled on by us means nothing to an SEO black-hat.
posted by scarabic at 8:01 PM on February 15, 2006

You call that a pile-on? Geez, kids these days.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:09 PM on February 15, 2006

But then how will we find the deleted posts to come up with "best reasons for deletion" lists?
posted by yhbc at 8:23 PM on February 15, 2006

Thanks, Matt. Also looking forward to OneClickSetSpammersComputerOnFire 2.0 Beta real soon.
posted by brownpau at 8:23 PM on February 15, 2006

How about an addition to their profile: "this member has been banned for self-linking" or some such thing so there's some sort of "record" of them.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:49 PM on February 15, 2006

First of all, self-links aren't that big of a problem now, so 'punishments' don't need to be ampped up. Plus, how do you 'punish' someone who doesn't care at all about the site?

Also, projects by n00bs kind of bug me too. But whatever.
posted by delmoi at 9:17 PM on February 15, 2006

By the time I can participate in a pile-on (after coming home from work) it's too late! Dammit!

how do you 'punish' someone who doesn't care at all about the site?


Exactly why you should let the pile-ons last a while longer. I imagine it can be pretty humiliating. Burning pitchforks for all, you fly snsranch buys!!!!! Yea, burn em all!!!!
posted by snsranch at 9:29 PM on February 15, 2006

Also, we should cut their hands off. Isn't that a web 2.0 application? Some sort of Saudi justice widget?
posted by klangklangston at 9:35 PM on February 15, 2006

I love a jorb well done.
posted by slogger at 10:06 PM on February 15, 2006

jeyyyaaauuhhhrbbbb.
posted by brownpau at 10:08 PM on February 15, 2006

I'm growing more and more convinced that any comprehensive response to the SEO-spam problem is going to have to incorporate the application of a few good sound beatings.
posted by moss at 10:29 PM on February 15, 2006

Incorporate a click-wrap agreement into the sign-up process in which new potential self-linkers agree that if they self link they give MetaFilter and the members thereof permission to launch DNS attacks against the self-linked site.
posted by caddis at 10:36 PM on February 15, 2006

Hey, Mathowie, you keeping any stats on this sort of abuse of the community?

'cause I'd love to know that I'm dead wrong about my dire predictions about the Rise of the Spamwads.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:20 PM on February 15, 2006

permission to launch DNS attacks against the self-linked site.

I agree with this and the beatdown sentiment. On a more practical level, how about an automatic bill for the standard adrate for N clickthrus (where N is the total number of current MeFi members).
posted by tweak at 11:44 PM on February 15, 2006

O.K., I confess.

I'm on the payroll of dead Japanese silent film directors.
posted by matteo at 12:11 AM on February 16, 2006

Send 'em grouse hunting with Cheney.

:-(
posted by grouse at 12:49 AM on February 16, 2006

Good luck to you grouse, let's hope he takes a couple of lawyers with him and gets distracted.
posted by NinjaPirate at 5:22 AM on February 16, 2006

I've always thought it was too much like a self-link for us to be able to post our own opinions in comments. Shouldn't we be posting each others' opinions instead? From now on whenever you see a jfuller post you can take it to be presenting nofundy's opinion.
posted by jfuller at 5:56 AM on February 16, 2006

There must be a way to automatically santorum the self-linking thread.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:23 AM on February 16, 2006

yhbc writes "But then how will we find the deleted posts to come up with 'best reasons for deletion' lists?"

Careful attention to lofi and an eidetic memory.
posted by Mitheral at 7:06 AM on February 16, 2006

Or the "detect deleted threads" bookmarklet.
posted by Gator at 7:56 AM on February 16, 2006

Careful attention to lofi and an eidetic memory.
posted by Mitheral

Crap, I keep forgetting about lofi.
posted by Eideteker at 11:05 AM on February 16, 2006

Great idea: Putting noindex, nofollow on posts deleted because they represent bad behavior -- like self-linking.

Bad idea: Putting noindex, nofollow on posts for any other reason.

Just doesn't make sense: De-link the stuff from the front page, then remove its search engine juice and thereby ensure that it lives forever in an information black hole. Jeebus -- at that point, why not just really and for true delete the damn thread? What's served, then, by the painfully polite fiction of leaving it in the database?

It's as though you're punishing the thread -- sticking it in limbo where it can contemplate its own lack of moral worth...
posted by lodurr at 12:56 PM on February 16, 2006