Shameless Self-Link Sunday

March 26, 2001 11:52 AM

Has this subject of limited self-blogs ever been brought up? Wait - before everyone starts throwing things at me. What if there were one day a month where self-blogging (to a limited extent) was allowed - say one per customer.

I appreciate the fact that MeFi isn't supposed to be a self-promotional place, but what if this one day - "Shameless Self-Blog Sunday" or whatever, it was cool to link to a project or site that the user had been involved in - with a significant notice (icon or text) that the blog was self-referential so readers would be forewarned.

I just know that lots of folks do have things they're proud of (myself included of course), that they want to share with MeFi, and it would be nice to have a way to do so without being horribly crass. As they say - "Well, it's an idea."
posted by kokogiak to feature requests at 11:52 AM (10 comments total)

Oops - never really stopped to think that everyone might join the party (was envisioning more like 10 to 20 posts). Hmmm. Maybe not such a great idea on the HP after all.
posted by kokogiak at 12:13 PM on March 26, 2001

How about a "registry" kind of a deal? Every MeFier gets one "slot" for a URL and, say, 255 characters to describe what's on the other end of the link... When somebody's interested in seeing what other people are doing, they can bring up this "registry" page and look at... well, whatever you point at (sorted in descending order by entry date, maybe?). Personally? I'd be interested in using this, not because I'd be entering in it (yet another downside of working for GlobalDominatingMegaCorp.) but because there seem to be a lot of creative MeFi members and I get a kick out of seeing what other people are coming up with.
posted by m.polo at 12:30 PM on March 26, 2001

Well, we already have something like a project registry, consisting of the links we can have in our personal profiles. Something like that in addition to what we already can do is just setting up an excuse for people to join MeFi, put up their plugs, and not contribute any content. One of the message boards I frequent bans any user with a post count >10 from starting topics in the site plugging forums, because the point of the board is interaction and discussion, not throwaway spamming.
posted by Electric Elf at 1:25 PM on March 26, 2001

IMHO, self-blogging's still not a great idea. I can put a link in my profile, as the Elf mentioned, and I have done so; if people want to get to my site, they can click through.

There are also places on the web you can self promote... I'm thinking something like Flash Kit should your site use Flash, etc.

What I wouldn't mind seeing, though, is a topic (MeTa?) in which people write about the links of other MeFi folks - kind of a, "Hey, check this out, it's a pretty neat site. What's nifty is that hijinx did it with nothing but EditPad and peanut butter!"... etc.
posted by hijinx at 4:37 PM on March 26, 2001

Hmmm, I remember Matt once posted a link (on the sidebar) to a dynamically generated page listing the homepages of all the members who'd put their urls in their profiles. I didn't bookmark it then, and now it's gone (silly girl). Anyone have the url handy?
posted by lia at 12:32 AM on March 27, 2001

I like that idea, hijinx. Obviously, people do occasionally do that, anyway, but generally I suspect it doesn't seem newsworthy enough for a post. And, indeed, I suppose generally it isn't, but despite the fact that I could always just go through most of the links myself, and that anyone who dug on a Metafilistine's site could write it up on his/her own log, I'd enjoy seeing a whole MT topic devoted to it: prefiltered, yet all in one (metafiltered) place.
posted by redfoxtail at 7:12 AM on March 27, 2001

Maybe one thread a month rather than one day a month, but I'd rather see it on MetaTalk of course.
posted by sudama at 7:32 AM on March 27, 2001

Lia, the link you're looking for is this one.
posted by norm at 7:55 AM on March 27, 2001

Electric Elf: YHBT. HAND.

m.polo's funny.

Hijinx, people can already do that on the front page. That's not self-blogging, that's pointing out a cool link. If someone runs a cool site (ie, edgecase.org which was recently link in MetaTalk) that's hasn't been put on MeFi's front page, link to it!

We don't have to avoid telling each other about a site just because it's a MeFi member's site. If Succa writes something I think's important on his site, I should be able to link to it, because not everyone at MeFi reads his site.

Users should be smart enough not to trade links to each other (hey Sean, I'll link you if you link me!) because they'll both be abused most rigourously by MeFi members. But if there's a project out there that I find out a MeFiite's working on, why shouldn't I link it?
posted by cCranium at 7:58 AM on March 27, 2001