You might post my project to MeFi, but can I add related info?

February 27, 2006 12:04 PM

At some point down the road I will release a project to Projects. I think it's cool and interesting enough that a MeFi post could well be deserved, not just linking to my project but to a number of related sites and documentation. I'm very close to this project, so I can handily write up what I think is a good and wide view of the issue to do more than promote my project. However, I don't want to be accused of self-linking and instead would rather post it to Projects with enough info for someone else to post on MeFi about it. Would suggesting someone do this in the writeup in Projects be going too far?

PS. Additional suggestion for the form I'm currently filling in: "Projects related"
posted by Kickstart70 to etiquette/policy at 12:04 PM (8 comments total)

Yeah, pushing people to help you promote your project may make your post sound spammy. Let the project stand on its own merits. Post it with some info explaining why you built it and what the point is, and if it's really good, someone will post it to MeFi. If not, live and learn.

If every post to Projects contained a plea from the author to help them promote it far and wide, it'd get old really quick.
posted by mathowie at 12:23 PM on February 27, 2006

Wouldn't you want people other than just the MeFi crowd to know this additional info? In which case you would want to add a background linkset/explanation to your page wouldn't you?

Anyway, were it to pass that your project got sent to the blue, you could add other links as a comment.
posted by peacay at 12:39 PM on February 27, 2006

You could also post about the "good and wide view of the issue" sans the self-link, and (maybe) mention your project inside the comments?
posted by signal at 1:59 PM on February 27, 2006

Yeah, pushing people to help you promote your project may make your post sound spammy.

He's not pushing people to promote his own project, he's saying, "Hey, if you like my project and are going to post it to MeFi, here's a bunch of related stuff not by me that you should include." I don't think there's a problem with that on Projects.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:22 PM on February 27, 2006

Well, if someone really wanted to think the worst, they could think as so:

"He's pre-packaging an FPP of his own project, as if to lower significantly the barrier to postworthiness and thus, in a sense, bribe potential posters with a no-effort ready-to-deploy post."
posted by cortex at 3:11 PM on February 27, 2006

Why not just word it differently:

Looking at this page I was inspired. Then I found that these three other projects do similar things, but it wasn't quite right. I wanted functionality to address this problem, so I have created this.

Hopefully that would inspire most people to include at least a couple of those links, but even if it didn't, they would probably post a referral back to the project, which is something.
posted by Chuckles at 3:35 PM on February 27, 2006

Why don't people understand that they have Contacts? Post it to Projects when it is ready, watch for someone that has added you as a contact to vote for it and then tactfully introduce your idea to them. They have already shown an interest in what you say and might welcome the idea of making a well crafted post to the front page.
posted by geekyguy at 3:38 PM on February 27, 2006

Spoken like a jilted contact geekyguy :P
posted by Chuckles at 3:46 PM on February 27, 2006