"Competitor" ethics

June 4, 2010 7:39 AM

I'd appreciate the mods' take (and of course that of other users more experienced than myself, which is just about everybody) on the ethics of linking to another forum in answer to an AskMeFi.

I'm a Windows user, and have for many years used another site probably familiar to other Windows users. Heck, why be cute about it: it's WindowsBBS. Over the years, those guys have helped me solve a lot of problems (and, modestly, I might have helped someone here and there too). So here's my quandary: sometimes on AskMeFi I see a Windows-related question that I know has been solved on that other site. My spontaneous reaction was to say hey, look here, there's your answer. But I've hesitated (and not done it, in the end) because I'm unsure of the ethics of linking to a "competitor".

Pro:
- the OP gets an immediate reply from specialists. So do other readers with the same doubts
- it doesn't prevent anybody from posting other Windows-related queries in the future

Con:
- it's directing traffic away from MeFi, not just in this specific instance but also potentially in the future.
- it's supporting a "competitor" site

I've been around computers for over 30 years, but I'm a relative newcomer to the online community scene, and unsure of the accepted conventions. And MeFi is far too dear to me to want to upset/annoy anybody by doing something generally regarded as unacceptable. Or maybe I'm just beanplating. Anyway, I won't direct any replies in that direction until/unless any comment on this thread reassures me that it's an OK and helpful thing to do.

posted by aqsakal to Etiquette/Policy at 7:39 AM (39 comments total)

It's fine, we're not competing with anyone.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:41 AM on June 4, 2010 [14 favorites]

Thanks, jessamin; yes, I know. That's why I put "competitor" in quotes - I couldn't think of a better word off the top of my head.
posted by aqsakal at 7:44 AM on June 4, 2010

Do it. Helpfulness is more important than the minor amount of temporary traffic loss. I've seen plenty of folks answer specialized questions by linking to the specialists. As long as you're not linking to the windows site for an answer about lawnmowers or relationship advice it seems like exactly what AskMe was designed to do: find the best answer.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:45 AM on June 4, 2010

- it's directing traffic away from MeFi, not just in this specific instance but also potentially in the future.

Not really if AskMe becomes known at THE place to ask questions and you get solid answers, even if they are on other websites.

Put another way: Which mechanic would you trust more, the one that insists they can fix all your problems, but doesn't or does it in a half assed way or the one that recommends other mechanics for situations they can't handle?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:46 AM on June 4, 2010 [3 favorites]

To expand, we are not competing with everyone, but also you'd be surprised how many people look at those sorts of forums and find them daunting or impenetrable. So when I go to the Apple forums to debug some weird problem, I might have to wade through ten or dfifteen threads trying to figure out which one deals with my special snowflake tech problem. And then I have to read ten different people going back and forth on the issue. Knowing which thread and which comment are really applicable to the OPs problem is doing a lot more in my opionion than just linking to another forum, it's pre-screening all the stuff that makes many people's eyes glaze over and doing them a real favor.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:47 AM on June 4, 2010 [7 favorites]

damn jessamyn thats pretty cocky. are you saying you're a monopoly?

Meta£ilter: We're not competing with anyone.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:48 AM on June 4, 2010 [4 favorites]

As long as you're not linking to the windows site for an answer about lawnmowers or relationship advice...

Dear AskMe, I'm shy and wondering what to this super cute co-worker...

0xC0000005 Unmountable volume
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:51 AM on June 4, 2010 [18 favorites]

I know what she meant by we're not competing with everyone, but I really like the way Potomac Avenue is taking jessamyn's comment must better.

To further encourage others to link in similar situations: there are a LOT of crap Windows help sites that come up when I try to solve a problem with Google. If I'm trying to solve the same problem as someone else in the past, I'm a lot more prone to go to the site that a trusted (or even semi-decent) AskMeFite linked.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:56 AM on June 4, 2010

Linking to a website that has information that could be useful to the OP ... is useful. There's no serious concern that by linking to a website that's not Metafilter, we'd be decreasing our popularity relative to that site.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:04 AM on June 4, 2010

Yeah, finding good information that answers someone's askme question and linking that in your askme answer: pretty much unambiguously good. Getting the problem solved is job one, and by using your familiarity with an external resource to connect an asker to good content at that resource you're doing exactly what you should be.

The only places where ethical weirdness come into this are the edge cases—if the external resource has some sort of barrier to entry (email/signup required to access the content is not great, payment required to access the content is actively problematic), or if you have some stakeholder relationship (owner, client/service relationship, etc) with the site and are linking to it proportionally a lot or signed up pretty solely to do so or the content is only tangential to the actual question.

Those sorts of things are problematic but for reasons largely orthogonal to the central yes-its-fine notion of just linking to some other place when that happens to be the best way to help answer someone's question.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:08 AM on June 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

damn jessamyn thats pretty cocky. are you saying you're a monopoly?

That's not cocky. That's reality. The only competition MetaFilter has is itself. I ascribe this notion to businesses of all sorts. You are your own worst critic and a business is it's own worst competition.

How often are you in a restaurant and think to yourself... "man, this place sure isn't what it used to be."

Imagine if instead it just got better with each visit. That's what I strive for and I think that's kind of what MeFi is all about.

Then again I just came back from a workout so I might be on an endorphin high. Please feel free to ignore.
posted by FlamingBore at 8:38 AM on June 4, 2010

Thanks guys (and girls); that's what I needed to know. Potomac Avenue's first post above is exactly how I saw it - I just wanted to be sure I was seeing it right.

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no stake in WindowsBBS. And it doesn't require registration/login to read. And yes, obviously referrals to a totally relevant thread, not just to the site homepage and look for yourself.
posted by aqsakal at 8:44 AM on June 4, 2010

Oh, and thanks, MCMikeNamara: with a trusted (or even semi-decent) AskMeFite I think I've actually, finally made it on board!

/kidding
posted by aqsakal at 9:05 AM on June 4, 2010

I've never understood the whole thing certain people/forums/sites have about against linking to other sites; this is the Internet, people. It's made of links!
posted by entropicamericana at 9:09 AM on June 4, 2010

It's made of links tubes.

FTFY.
posted by Jon-o at 9:21 AM on June 4, 2010

Dear AskMe, I'm too lazy for endorphin highs. Does anyone know how to get them without physical exertion?
posted by cjorgensen at 9:45 AM on June 4, 2010

I've never understood the whole thing certain people/forums/sites have about against linking to other sites; this is the Internet, people. It's made of links!

One reason I've seen this sort of policy go into place on other sites is that it can be a form of spamming. Somebody starts a new message board, and then starts linking to it from every even slightly related existing site they can find, repeatedly. It's a real headache.

We don't see a lot of this here, I suspect mainly because it costs $5 to open a new account, which gets closed rather quickly when outrageous self-linking is noticed. This limits it to a level where the community as a whole, and the moderators specifically, can stay on top of it.

Without that, a bunch of places have resorted to the "no linking to other message boards" blunt instrument to keep a lid on this problem instead. That's less time-consuming to enforce than trying to investigate self-linking on a board where the offender can just create an unlimited number of replacement accounts anyway. This isn't the only reason for such a policy, but seems to be one of the main ones.
posted by FishBike at 9:45 AM on June 4, 2010

this is the Internet, people. It's made of links!

And porn. And pictures of cats. The rest is mostly filler.
posted by quin at 10:07 AM on June 4, 2010 [5 favorites]

Why replicate the same information across multiple sites? Point the Asker to the existing information. And hey, if the forum turns out to be helpful to them, you've not only helped them with the problem they asked about, you've also introduced them to a resource which they can benefit from and exploit in the future.

(This may be the nearly-complete MLS talking.)
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:08 AM on June 4, 2010

It's not a competition...

IT'S A SLAUGHTER!! GO METAFILTER RAH RAH!
posted by Salvor Hardin at 10:23 AM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Just don't link to Expert Sexchange. Oops, I mean Experts Exchange.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:38 AM on June 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yeah, expertsexchange are dicks. I love how they let search engines view their answers for SEO results, but then you click on them and they expect you to pay for that info.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:40 AM on June 4, 2010

My gut feeling is if the same question has been answered on some other forum, you should feel free to link to the question and its answer. I certainly would, and I'm sure a few times I've probably done so (to Stack Overflow or similar places, probably).

What I generally do though (and I'm not putting this forward as best practice necessarily, this is just my preference) if it's not a high-profile board like SO that's likely to be around for a long time, is either quote or summarize the solution given on the other board and include it in my AskMe response. This isn't because I am trying to 'steal traffic' from the other site or discourage someone from clicking through, it's because a lot of bulletin boards are unstable and/or have crummy archive policies or are just poorly managed. It's pretty frustrating to read a post that says "Hey, your solution is right here" only to find out that the link is dead.

While the immediate reason for AskMe is the person actually asking the question, I feel like a secondary reason are all the people who may find and read that question in the future. (I can't tell you how many times I've Googled something and found an AskMe thread in the top 5.) So I try to do what I can to make sure that an answer can stand on its own even if the links rot.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:44 AM on June 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

If I ask a question and you direct me to a good answer then it is a good answer.

Yeah, expertsexchange are dicks. I love how they let search engines view their answers for SEO results, but then you click on them and they expect you to pay for that info.

...except Experts Exchange or similar SEO spammy crap. Fuck those guys. But hey, they don't actually give you a good answer, so that's never going to be an issue.
posted by Artw at 10:50 AM on June 4, 2010

We don't see a lot of this here, I suspect mainly because it costs $5 to open a new account, which gets closed rather quickly when outrageous self-linking is noticed. This limits it to a level where the community as a whole, and the moderators specifically, can stay on top of it.

It also helps that our established community members are sharp-eyed and opinionated—if someone starts posting a lot of crappy links or a lot of links to the same site into askme threads, we're likely to hear about it even if we don't catch it directly ourselves. I've definitely had to shut a few folks down for that sort of thing (and ban a fair few more early on in pretty egregious spamming ventures). It applies to all kinds of content, not particularly forums alone, but they're in the mix in any case.

What I generally do though (and I'm not putting this forward as best practice necessarily, this is just my preference) if it's not a high-profile board like SO that's likely to be around for a long time, is either quote or summarize the solution given on the other board and include it in my AskMe response.

It's a good practice. Linkrot happens, and where it makes sense to include a pullquote along with a link it's totally fine and helpful to do so.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:00 AM on June 4, 2010

Yeah, expertsexchange are dicks. I love how they let search engines view their answers for SEO results, but then you click on them and they expect you to pay for that info.

...except Experts Exchange or similar SEO spammy crap. Fuck those guys. But hey, they don't actually give you a good answer, so that's never going to be an issue.


I have found good info on there once in a blue moon. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but whenever I've navigated to them via Google, if you scroll down to the bottom, you can see all the stuff you supposedly have to pay for. It's really bizarre.

But yeah, they're shady as all hell.
posted by kmz at 11:03 AM on June 4, 2010

I appreciate when someone who knows an answer elsewhere is good points me at it. It saves a serious pain in the ass of picking through search engine results like "Get skype crashing at 50% off!" or the super annoying "click a search engine result, which results in some SEO jackass's link aggregator page repeating the same search with sleazy ads inserted"

I also like the endorsement-by-a-mefite value. Seems like any idiot can put some wrong info on the net, and it will get replicated all over the place. Having someone you trust (relatively, for a person you've never met) recommend a solution, even if they didn't think it up themself, is more valuable than just stumbling across it with Google.
posted by ctmf at 11:20 AM on June 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Pope Guilty: "Yeah, expertsexchange are dicks. I love how they let search engines view their answers for SEO results, but then you click on them and they expect you to pay for that info."

I'm surprised how many people don't know: If you keep scrolling down, you can read the answers. They just have a trick "ooh, that's the end of the answers" footer before the un-obfuscated answers. That said, Stack Overflow and its ilk have prevented me from having to go to ExpertSexchange for at least the past year. I'm a better person for it.
posted by Plutor at 11:24 AM on June 4, 2010

Last I heard, EE and its ilk were doing a "content is viewable on first clickthrough if you scroll down" sort of thing, using cookies to make it not viewable on subsequent visits. In theory to pacify pissed off search engines, or something. I haven't kept up, because, seriously, fuck those guys.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:24 AM on June 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

It also helps that our established community members are sharp-eyed and opinionated—if someone starts posting a lot of crappy links or a lot of links to the same site into askme threads, we're likely to hear about it even if we don't catch it directly ourselves.

Yeah, and this is where I think the $5 fee helps the community as a whole do this. It's hard to notice one particular user behaving in an undesirable way over the noise of a thousand others all doing the same thing. But since it's not that common here to start with, it's quite noticeable on the relatively rare occasions when it happens. The sharp-eyed and opinionated folks don't get burned out from reporting this stuff every 5 minutes, as they otherwise would.

I'm not saying the signup fee is the only reason that MetaFilter is a better place for questions and discussions than a lot of other sites, because there is a lot more to it than that of course. I just think we would have trouble maintaining all the other good stuff that leads to a good community like this without it. And the "no links to other discussion sites" sort of rule is one example of a not-so-great way of tackling one of the problems we'd have here otherwise.
posted by FishBike at 11:26 AM on June 4, 2010

What I generally do though (and I'm not putting this forward as best practice necessarily, this is just my preference) if it's not a high-profile board like SO that's likely to be around for a long time, is either quote or summarize the solution given on the other board and include it in my AskMe response. This isn't because I am trying to 'steal traffic' from the other site or discourage someone from clicking through, it's because a lot of bulletin boards are unstable and/or have crummy archive policies or are just poorly managed. It's pretty frustrating to read a post that says "Hey, your solution is right here" only to find out that the link is dead.


Plus, summarizing the solution helps filter through the crap that inevitably crops up in some of these forum threads. You know, the kind where the first ten responses consist of lulzy injokes, "Use teh search n00b!!!1!", "Kill yourself" and deliberately terrible advice that you'd need a reasonable level of expertise to recognize the uselessness of, before finally some kind soul weighs in with an actual answer.
posted by arto at 11:50 AM on June 4, 2010

Dear AskMe, I'm too lazy for endorphin highs. Does anyone know how to get them without physical exertion?

Why, yes!
Simply type in "delete system32" (without the quotes, of course)
You're welcome.

What? Oh, sorry, I thought you meant "adrenaline".
posted by Drasher at 12:00 PM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Or just chug some hot sauce.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:08 PM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Does anyone know how to get them without physical exertion?

Hit self in head with hammer.
Stop. Enjoy.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:26 PM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Used judiciously, I think it's really helpful. For your example, there are about a million billion forums where someone could theoretically go to request Windows help. If you know of a good forum, with reliable posters, which you're willing to back with your recommendation, that is a BIG help to someone who's flailing for assistance.
posted by ErikaB at 3:30 PM on June 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Does anyone know how to get them without physical exertion?

Curry. I'm not being facetious, a good hot curry (hot sauce works too) triggers the same endorphin high in your brain that exercise does.

There are probably drugs that do it too but I prefer vindaloo.
posted by shelleycat at 4:53 PM on June 4, 2010

Wait wait wait. There are other sites?
posted by Pronoiac at 10:18 PM on June 4, 2010

I hope it is OK with you if I favorite this post. Let me know if it isn't and I'll unfavorite it!
posted by finite at 12:38 AM on June 5, 2010

I hope it is OK with you if I favorite this post. Let me know if it isn't and I'll unfavorite it!

You've helped restore balance to the universe. Yesterday, I felt a great disturbance in the MetaForce, as if thousands of favorites suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly deleted. I fear something terrible has happened.
posted by FishBike at 6:54 AM on June 5, 2010