Are links to outside discussions okay?

May 12, 2001 4:52 PM

What is the MeFi policy on brining up detailed discussions from other communities? This thread points to another thread at Freshmeat and asks the same questions that the Freshmeat community already had answered.
posted by tamim to Etiquette/Policy at 4:52 PM (6 comments total)

I don't think there's any policy, but it happens pretty frequently. There's something a little pointless about it, but on the other hand, it's common for people in different communities to comment on the same events. For my part, I often find the Metafilter discussion more rewarding. (The only place where discussions regularly occur at a higher caliber, IMHO, is kuro5hin. Slashdot often casts a wider net and gets some very good one-off posts, but is much less consistent and has little give-and-take like a real community site.)
posted by dhartung at 11:23 AM on May 13, 2001

I don't think he's asking about parallel discussions. I think he's asking about a case where the MeFi link is specifically to a discussion on some other forum, rather than to the primary source the other discussion concerns.

In other words, case 1:

MeFi link to BBC article. Parallel discussion on SlashDot which also links to the same BBC article.

case 2:

SlashDot links to BBC article. MeFi links to the SlashDot discussion itself.

Case 1 is common and OK. What do we think about case 2?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 1:40 PM on May 13, 2001

"What do we think" in practice means "What does Matt think".
posted by Steven Den Beste at 1:40 PM on May 13, 2001

case 2 = it sucks.

Don't do it. I've deleted threads before that linked to other threads on slashdot (and other sites) because it's kind of pointless. Do you leave a comment here? there? both places?

It's confusing, go to the source whenever possible.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:55 PM on May 13, 2001

Maybe I can explain why I posted that link. I felt that the discussion on Freshmeat was a failure. One person stated a point of view and was then abused. That was about it. By posting the link here I hoped that I would see more open debate. In particular, I think Metafilter readers are more sympathetic to human rights issues.

Clearly I was wrong - no-one took it up, and I won't do it again.

Finally, wouldn't it have been polite to tell me about this discussion?

posted by andrew cooke at 1:18 PM on May 17, 2001

Sorry, one other point. I did link to the source. The source contained both the original article and the discussion.

posted by andrew cooke at 1:21 PM on May 17, 2001