If you'll excuse the wild speculation... November 17, 2008 8:02 PM   Subscribe

Self-link?

I noticed that, in addition to this being an obviously shitty post, two of the very few comments (1, 2) made by the poster link to the same site (albeit four years ago) in a highly suspicious manner.
posted by dhammond to Etiquette/Policy at 8:02 PM (47 comments total)

...and now his account is disabled.
posted by dhammond at 8:06 PM on November 17, 2008


yep. weird huh?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:06 PM on November 17, 2008


Did a little more digging and this is definitely a self-link, as evidenced by this comment.
posted by dhammond at 8:10 PM on November 17, 2008


Dude, you traced it back to mathowie.

"The first thing you should know about us is that... we have people everywhere."
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:17 PM on November 17, 2008


Yeah, I figured it out just after jessamyn deleted it, and banned him for life. Surprised he self-linked before and we didn't catch it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:45 PM on November 17, 2008


Still, you have to appreciate the dedication of a self-linker lurking for four years.

Today? No, not yet - I must wait, and gain their trust ... soon, though, soon ...
posted by yhbc at 9:03 PM on November 17, 2008 [14 favorites]


Though on the other hand, if he started out on an SEO spree to promote his website and only remembered four years later he was supposed to be astro-turfing, you can sort of see why their website is underexposed....
posted by Phire at 9:28 PM on November 17, 2008


(Also, why isn't the post "example.com"?)
posted by Phire at 9:28 PM on November 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


This is why I'm still waiting another two years or so. My plan is foolproof.
posted by loquacious at 9:38 PM on November 17, 2008


Err, was.
posted by loquacious at 9:38 PM on November 17, 2008 [3 favorites]


Surprised he self-linked before and we didn't catch it.

I've self-linked dozens of times. I thought it was OK as long as you didn't get caught.
posted by sluglicker at 9:58 PM on November 17, 2008


It is not example.com, it goes to a screencap of a citibank offer, and a link to the guy's book.
posted by dirty lies at 11:01 PM on November 17, 2008


Well yeah, but usually when there's a self-linker, mathowie bans the perp and changes the self-links to "example.com" to make sure they're not getting any inadvertent traffic from the self-link anyway.
posted by Phire at 11:06 PM on November 17, 2008


That is what I mean. The link has not been changed. I am too lazy to memail the mods about it.
posted by dirty lies at 11:19 PM on November 17, 2008


I removed the link to the site. Jessamyn hadn't realized it was a self-link when she removed it so the link was still intact.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:25 PM on November 17, 2008


That's why I recently purchased example.com.

Mwa ha ha ha ha ha.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:53 PM on November 17, 2008


Is this where I self-link?

I, of course, would never do that. Mainly because as shallow and uninteresting as I am here, I'm ten times as shallow and a magnitude more boring on my own sites.
posted by maxwelton at 2:16 AM on November 18, 2008


Though I am trying a fund-raiser on one site. I have raised in the two figures so far, not to brag or anything.
posted by maxwelton at 2:19 AM on November 18, 2008


Looking at the donation, um...thanks, mom.
posted by maxwelton at 2:20 AM on November 18, 2008


This is the moment I've been waiting for: check out my fully-cooked, ready to heat and eat self-link sausages.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:23 AM on November 18, 2008


Cross post. [shit, I'd hate to be a mod sorting this stuff out.]
That's somewhat awesome flapjax at midnite. As a vegetarian viewing that image, a few things come to mind… there are some vegetables in the pictures, they're just pureed or turned into sauces but the spatlese, spinach and condiments look good. The huge stein of beer that appears in nearly every picture, nice. The mustard, Yes. The sausages wrapped 'en link' around myriad joint of meat ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE.
posted by tellurian at 5:56 AM on November 18, 2008


yhbc writes "Still, you have to appreciate the dedication of a self-linker lurking for four years.

"
Today? No, not yet - I must wait, and gain their trust ... soon, though, soon ... "

There are a couple accounts I've been watching for a few months now that I think are going to self link. One of them even has SEO as his occupation.
posted by Mitheral at 6:46 AM on November 18, 2008


One of them even has SEO as his occupation.

Generally, we're watching them too but if you see them feel free to point them out to us because we can put them on a special "sketchy" list and keep a close eye on them.

Cross post. [shit, I'd hate to be a mod sorting this stuff out.]


I have no idea why you said that or why you just linked to that other MeTa thread.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:11 AM on November 18, 2008


Trust me, we're watching them too.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:12 AM on November 18, 2008


If the mod staff ever has a reason to do that Hero Walk thing in slow motion for the purposes of e.g. an ensemble action adventure film, I want our music to be Hammer to Fall.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:15 AM on November 18, 2008


Burhanistan just wants the special pat-down search from the mods.
posted by needled at 7:30 AM on November 18, 2008


Not Hail to the Hammer?
posted by bzbb at 7:43 AM on November 18, 2008


Is there like a banhammer record? I'd like to see how fast the hammer gets put down. World records like that interest me.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:38 AM on November 18, 2008


Man, he/she almost made his/her 4th anniversary too!
posted by Pollomacho at 10:10 AM on November 18, 2008


I want our music to be Hammer to Fall.

I can't tell if I love the tank top or the sweatbands more.

posted by middleclasstool at 10:22 AM on November 18, 2008


Self-link. I'm sure this joke has probably already been made.
posted by cjorgensen at 11:42 AM on November 18, 2008


Bah, Matt's had me on his "sketchy list" since 1999. But they still allow self-links in the comments with proper disclaimer, right?
posted by wendell at 12:17 PM on November 18, 2008


Man, if I had a hammer...
posted by stavrogin at 1:00 PM on November 18, 2008


Matt, why are you driving all that traffic to example.com?
posted by Mister_A at 1:24 PM on November 18, 2008


Give me a call Matt, we need to sort this out.

555-4242.

Thanks

A
posted by Mister_A at 1:25 PM on November 18, 2008


Welcome to example.com!
posted by languagehat at 2:05 PM on November 18, 2008


Cross post. [shit, I'd hate to be a mod sorting this stuff out.]
I have no idea why you said that or why you just linked to that other MeTa thread.

Because I posted in that other thread by mistake. Thanks for cleaning up after me. You're good people jessamyn and I wouldn't intentionally mess with you. Hug.
posted by tellurian at 2:26 PM on November 18, 2008


tellurian:
"The sausages wrapped 'en link' around myriad joint of meat ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE"

That's a wicker cornucopia the sausages are draped across. No less weird, no more acceptable, but felt compelled to clarify.
posted by batmonkey at 2:35 PM on November 18, 2008


Please now parse 'Cross post' as 'I'm very cross with myself for having mistakenly posted in the wrong thread'. Thank you.
posted by tellurian at 2:39 PM on November 18, 2008


That's a wicker cornucopia
So it is!
9835; InSumer Is Icumen In 9835;
Sergeant Neil Howie
posted by tellurian at 2:55 PM on November 18, 2008


What?
9835; Sumer Is Icumen In 9835;
posted by tellurian at 3:11 PM on November 18, 2008


Geez!
Test
♩♪♫♬
posted by tellurian at 3:13 PM on November 18, 2008


Okay. Here we go.
That's a wicker cornucopia
So it is!
♫ Sumer Is Icumen In ♫
Sergeant Neil Howie
posted by tellurian at 3:15 PM on November 18, 2008


Just try and relax, tellurian. The men from the hospital will be here shortly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:28 PM on November 18, 2008


And I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats.
posted by tellurian at 4:35 PM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Just for my personal info here, self-linking is when someone makes a post that benefits them in someway, shape or form correct?
posted by Mastercheddaar at 8:21 AM on November 19, 2008


No. Self-linking is basically making a post linking to something that you made or created or had a hand in making. It's also broadly extended here on MeFi to mean a post where you are close to the people who made the site [and the definition of "close to" is a little fluid, when in doubt ask a mod] That rule exists so that we don't have to figure out what the angle might be wherein you are trying to profit from the post you made. To repeat, you don't have to benefit for it to be an against-the-rules self-link.

We want people to link to stuff they think is great. We want them not to link to stuff that they may be too close to to make an independent determination of greatness. If it's your thing and it's great, post it to Projects. If it's your close friend/family member's thing and it's great, you may not be able to post it to MeFi. Encoourage them to get a MeFi account and post it to Projects.

In comments, it's generally okay to link to your own stuff as long as you're fairly clear that it's your own stuff and if it's not basically spammy looking [i.e. google bombing sort of SEO links, these are crystal clear to see when they're happening] and/or your only contribution to the site. In AskMe posts [not comments] we'd prefer if you only linked to stuff that was NECESSARY to the answering of the question so that we don't have to try to figure out if you're gaming the site to increase your page rank with a fakey question. If the link doesn't look necessary, we'll sometimes take it out and tell you to put it in your profile. Profile pages are marked nofollow so that you can stll use them to link to your own stuff, but there's no way you can game the system that way.

Some people abbreviate this set of guidelines to "OMG NEVER SELF_LINK" and while we're happier if people are a little overcautious about linking to their own stuff, the reality is a little more nuanced. make sense?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:38 AM on November 19, 2008


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