Fabulous Edible Spam Creations

August 8, 2011 4:00 PM

I was wondering if the powers that be had given any thought recently to perhaps raising the admission price for Projects. (You know, now that Metafilter rules Google and all...)

There's a post in Projects that strikes me as being as close to spamming as you can get away with here. It's from a poster with a 3-week old account, 1 MeFi comment, 1 Ask comment, and oh wait... that's actually two Project posts. To identical, cookie-cutter, ham-scented websites complete with pop-ups!

This is the poster in question. But my wider concern is whether the outbound Google foo of Metafilter actually encourages this to the point where it's worth the $5 just for the link juice. If so, perhaps either a) links should be no-follow, or b) the barrier to entry should be raised to a higher particiaption threshold, like it is to make a FPP.

posted by DarlingBri to Etiquette/Policy at 4:00 PM (45 comments total)

Yeah, but the user in question has been a member for a year now. ISN'T THAT ENOUGH?
posted by KokuRyu at 4:07 PM on August 8, 2011

Projects is pretty low-traffic. When I posted there, I was watching my stats and didn't get a whole lotta foo, compared with [various other places that are free to sign up for and post links to if you're so inclined].
posted by Gator at 4:07 PM on August 8, 2011

Well, the presentation of foods for kids is pretty cool, but you have a good point about what is a "project" and what is a self-link to an existing website being posted to generate traffic. Maybe linking to something that is over 6 months (some time frame) old is considered a self-spam? I do not think that the issue should be centered upon the value of the $5 sign-up fee versus the self link. I think the definition of a project is the issue we should focus upon.
posted by AugustWest at 4:08 PM on August 8, 2011

I like to think that paying the $5 and choosing a username makes you as much a MeFite as anyone else.

Mathowie checks the Projects posts before they go live, so I don't think there's a need to worry about spamming. I don't see any reason there should be a barrier for lurkers who made a cool website and want join MeFi to share it with a community they respect.
posted by auto-correct at 4:22 PM on August 8, 2011 [4 favorites]

Sure. I'm actually not advocating a position here, just asking a question. (I may also have the lay of this land wrong. Or even the posting threshold.) I'm just saying that these days, $5 for a link from a site with authority is a damn fine deal - it's more about the search bump than the traffic.

Plus, agencies create accounts and personas months and months in advance of needing to use them for clients these days, and I'm naturally suspicious, so this just tweaked my... tweakmeter... and made me wonder about the threshold in general. I don't want any area of MeFi to be successfully gamed or abused, that's all.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:23 PM on August 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

All the Projects stuff goes through us (which is to say Matt, 99% of the time), and, yeah, there's always sort of the question of where that borderline should be.

To some extent, we feel like if we have someone who signs up with the intent to self-promote, then gets as far as getting ready to make a post to the front page, reads the reminder that's a bannin', and marches on over to Projects instead to go the legit route, we've largely succeeded at finding a best-case scenario outcome.

That said, sometimes it feels like someone's just riding that tiger over the long haul, and that bears looking at, and this particular user is probably one we need to keep more of an eye on if Projects churn remains indeed the only real thing they're doing here. Because Projects is pretty low volume and goes through a queue, we haven't really tied in "keep an eye on 'em" system to it but there might be a decent way to us a little bit of monitoring to control for repeated use of Projects without any other community involvement.

In the absence of that, the flagging system works over there as well as anywhere and it's always fine to drop us a line if you see something hinky too. Now and then something gets approved that maybe shouldn't have just because we're not being laser-eyed about it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:30 PM on August 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

Well, for what it's worth, my PageRank didn't skyrocket after I posted to Projects last year either. Not that I was gunning for that to happen with my offbeat little personal site, but you know.

What does bug me a bit is the few established MeFites who keep posting individual entries/articles from their one website over there as a "Project," which I thought was specifically against the rules, but as has been pointed out, Matt approves them, so.

Now that I think of that, maybe there should be a dupe-checker for Projects like there is for the Blue. The person this thread is about made both of her Projects on the same domain (haven't clicked, not interested, don't know if they're separate projects in any way or just blog categories).
posted by Gator at 4:32 PM on August 8, 2011

Projects is PR6, while the blue is PR7, FWIW. Ask is also PR6 which I would have expected to be higher.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:37 PM on August 8, 2011

I feel like, as long as the project isn't flat wrong ("look at this great site I built to buy Chinese V1@gr@!"), it's a necessary evil of projects existing without contending with arbitrary boundaries of "what's a real project" or "who's a real member". Projects is for self-promotion.

Further, I've seen a few of these where it seems like a person pretty much only joined to post a project, and they never seem to do well as far as attracting votes, much less getting promoted to the front page. And while I've stumbled upon a number of Ask questions in random searching online, and a couple front page posts, I've never hit a Projects post by accident.
posted by nanojath at 4:50 PM on August 8, 2011

Wow, both of those sites are kinda the worst of the web.
posted by klangklangston at 5:14 PM on August 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hot damn, I've been looking for FREE tutorials on how to make edible bouquets, this is a gold mine!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:23 PM on August 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

DarlingBri == veta7
PROVE ME WRONG SHEEPLE

and she has clearly taken the "any publicity is good publicity" mindset to heart
posted by Salvor Hardin at 5:31 PM on August 8, 2011

and another thing, when is the last time someone actually used "sheeple" in a non-ironic context?
posted by Salvor Hardin at 5:32 PM on August 8, 2011

I was going to make a joke about how the OED sadly lacks any info on it but, well, the OED actually has "sheeple" cites going back to 1945. Huh.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:48 PM on August 8, 2011 [6 favorites]

Obviously from the old nursery rhyme with hand gestures:

Here's the church, and here's the steeple
Open the door and see all the sheeple.
posted by Quonab at 6:01 PM on August 8, 2011 [4 favorites]

I can't even see one of the project sites:

High Risk Website Blocked
Location: ediblecraftsonline.com/index.htm Access has been blocked as the threat Troj/JSRedir-BP has been found on this website.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 6:04 PM on August 8, 2011

Well, this is on the About Page:

Now this Affiliate Masters Course is available for free download. If you want to learn about earning money online, this book is the best place to start. Following the advice in this course I got my site on the first page of Google search results for my keywords. This is huge, ask any webmaster! I did it myself without hiring any search engine experts to promote my site. You can do it too.
posted by Vaike at 6:20 PM on August 8, 2011

How about a $5 fee for posting new threads on Metatalk? You know, to keep the riff raff out.
posted by joannemullen at 6:24 PM on August 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

I spend a lot of time on projects. I seldom see something wonky.

When there is something odd I just assume it's not for me.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:37 PM on August 8, 2011

I was going to make a joke about how the OED sadly lacks any info on it but, well, the OED actually has "sheeple" cites going back to 1945. Huh.

This isn't what we're talking about, but if someone started a "fuck yeah OED" project, I'd probably easily get behind it.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:06 PM on August 8, 2011

I was going to make a joke about how the OED sadly lacks any info on it but, well, the OED actually has "sheeple" cites going back to 1945. Huh.

People been trying to wake up sheep for quite a while.
posted by ignignokt at 7:18 PM on August 8, 2011

No one really mentioned but our general rule of thumb for Projects is that you can use it for a related project twice [like the launch and then a major redesign] and then not again. Of course we know there are a few people who seem to put up a lot of longish but not entire-site blog posts sequentially and while I don't think I'd approve them if it were my site, Matt seems to think it's okay so it's okay sort of by definition. The thing about Projects is that Matt basically approves every post, or nearly every one. So he's sort of the arbiter, and while this may have been an iffy approval, I'm pretty sure it's the last one for this user, or at least I hope so.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:22 PM on August 8, 2011

and another thing, when is the last time someone actually used "sheeple" in a non-ironic context?

Start here.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:52 PM on August 8, 2011

riding that tiger over the long haul, and that bears looking at

No lions? :(
posted by LionIndex at 8:01 PM on August 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

google fu, like Kung Fu.

I feel better now.
posted by theora55 at 9:00 PM on August 8, 2011

Try new healthy, fibrous Google bar!
posted by adamdschneider at 9:10 PM on August 8, 2011

and another thing, when is the last time someone actually used "sheeple" in a non-ironic context?

Yesterday.
posted by John Cohen at 9:23 PM on August 8, 2011

Thanks, cortex and Jessamyn. And I like the term "Projects churn," cheers for articulating that for me.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:45 PM on August 8, 2011

Some of those tutorials are actually pretty impressive.
posted by needs more cowbell at 10:48 PM on August 8, 2011

I'm just saying that these days, $5 for a link from a site with authority is a damn fine deal - it's more about the search bump than the traffic.

Yeah, but it's Projects. No one looks at that stuff. There are currently five out of fifty-one posts on the front page of Projects with comment counts in the double digits.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:22 PM on August 8, 2011

...and eleven with no comments at all.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:25 PM on August 8, 2011

Yeah, that was a borderline post and I refused several submissions from them ever since they signed up but eventually let one through. It has been many months since they posted, and I didn't feel like shooting them down again and let it through knowing it was kind of lame, but we don't have awesome-ness as a requirement so I half-heartedly approved it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:24 AM on August 9, 2011

This discussion reminded me of this jobs post which reads like scam to me. Then again, maybe everything in that particular field reads like scam. For me it was borderline FIAMO and I was wondering if others read it similarly.
posted by sciencegeek at 2:25 AM on August 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Maybe people should be able to vote projects down?
posted by kmennie at 6:57 AM on August 9, 2011

I wish people paid more attention to Projects. Most of the stuff on there is really awesome because Mefites are cool.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:57 AM on August 9, 2011

Maybe people should be able to vote projects down?

Nah. Flagging, email, and Metatalk are available for "this is a problem"-flavored feedback about a post. Beyond that, lack of positive feedback is its own kind of feedback.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:57 AM on August 9, 2011

I think a documented rel=nofollow on links from Projects should serve to discourage PageRank gaming, while still providing a way for the community to learn about projects their fellow users are involved in.
posted by kindall at 9:23 AM on August 9, 2011

Wow. I can't believe I never noticed you could flag a project. *headdesk* Thanks, cortex.
posted by pointystick at 10:50 AM on August 9, 2011

I think we should raise the cost of everything in the world, ever, because I like watching poor people being excluded. Hey, isn't it time we raised taxes on beer and tobacco?
posted by Decani at 1:53 PM on August 9, 2011

I think it would be a shame to exclude the folk who are doing cool stuff and want to share it with those who may be interested, in order to deal with people who sign up to shill their sketchy business.

I do think joannemullen should be charged $5 to make comments, mind,.
posted by mippy at 1:57 PM on August 9, 2011

Not sure if this is worth its own MetaTalk post, but here it goes: one thing that bothers the shit out of me in MetaTalk is the constant calling out of other MeFi users who are completely unaware that people are talking about them. Not sure how to solve it, but it's a problem. I bet Veta7 would like to know his/her posts generated this reaction, and I would argue she has a right to.
posted by falameufilho at 1:23 PM on August 10, 2011

For the most part, folks seem to do an okay job of leaving a note in a thread where some activity on the site leads directly to a metatalk about that specific activity, but it's not specifically enforced and people will make contextual calls on it.

It is always okay to drop some a quick "hey, in case you didn't see it" email or mefimail about a metatalk if you think they haven't had a chance to notice it and should.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:44 PM on August 10, 2011

cortex: "It is always okay to drop some a quick "hey, in case you didn't see it" email or mefimail about a metatalk if you think they haven't had a chance to notice it and should."

It's nice, but I'm not sure people actually do it. I've been mentioned in discussions here and found out about it way after the fact. Since a big point in MetaTalk is resolving certain kinds of disputes, I think it's paramount that parts involved are aware the matter is being debated and their name is being thrown around.
posted by falameufilho at 9:07 PM on August 10, 2011

I'm not saying "people always do it"; while I think people do a pretty good job of it either up front or once something is rolling, I qualified my comment there specifically because, yes, it's not always something that happens.

I'm saying "this is a thing people, including you, can do". You, right now, can do it if you're concerned it needs doing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:53 PM on August 10, 2011

I have pretty consistently posted links to Metas in threads when appropriate. I did not in this case because I did not intend it as a callout of veta7. The project is there, Matt approved it, it stands and veta7 has nothing to answer for. My concern was the larger question posed about the low barrier to entry for Projects and the possibility of no-follow-ing the links.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:30 AM on August 11, 2011