Another day, another link

August 5, 2001 6:27 PM

Serial Linker A lot of folks on MetaFilter probably post in the same genre every once in a while, but what do people feel about someone linking every day on the same topic? Clearly it's not something anyone wants to become a widespread trend; is it appropriate in any context?
posted by chaz to Etiquette/Policy at 6:27 PM (8 comments total)

seems like it would be perfect content for a personal blog or more interesting grouped together as matt pointed out with some overall commentary.
posted by heather at 6:30 PM on August 5, 2001

Why not start a thread and post to it every day? Sure, it'd disappear from view for those who sort by date, but not for those who sort by recent comments ....
posted by webmutant at 8:31 PM on August 5, 2001

I actually kind of liked the idea of what jcterminal was doing, but wasn't really interested enough in the content to follow the links. And keeping up any sort of reasonable discussion around each successive link other than 'yeah that artist guy/gal is pretty cool, alright' didn't really seem possible.

Perhaps links to 'the 30 most censored news items' or the '15 least known cool things about teeny tiny European countries' or something might have been a better choice as a serial. It's all in the cliffhanger, and the anticipation of tomorrow's episode.

I'm sure there were lots of MeFi'ers who were just hanging to see what jcterminal's next linked artist would be. I wasn't one of them, but a maybe well-chosen series of thematically linked posts wouldn't be such a terrible thing...after all, isn't that what most folks are doing when they post to the front page? The theme is 'stuff I find interesting' when unstated, but it's still a thread of sorts.

Whaddaya reckon?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:37 PM on August 5, 2001

I think you've got to be really careful with this sort of thing. If it's just really great, intriguing content, and it doesn't become a habit... then, yeah, I imagine I wouldn't mind. I'd be glad, even. But I think it's going to be really easy to miss and cross over that line. Overall, this sort of thing is probably better suited to your personal blog than it is to metafilter.

Of course, Matt's opinion is the one that counts. He sets the rules and the tone around here, and rightly so.
posted by gd779 at 8:43 PM on August 5, 2001

I just didn't think there were enough differences between the four links shown to separate them into new threads that only garnered a few comments each. If they were vastly different, it could be interesting, but it would have to be really good overall to work and appeal to a sizable segment.

I was probably a bit gruff and pissy about it because people keep telling me how much traffic they're getting from metafilter now, and I've heard from unapologetic self-linkers that they only did it for the 400 or so referrer hits and that they sometimes post to the front page just to boost traffic to their profile URL, so when I see someone pledging to post to the front page of MetaFilter everyday for a month with ho-hum links, I have to wonder why they're doing it in that posting style. Why not have one big post of techy winamp skin creators instead, with a single post followup of 5-10 comic artists a week later, then a post the following week with other types of artists?

The thing is, the content and tone we set today set the tone of tomorrow. Everything on the site sets a precedent, especially when someone tries something new. If jct went on with 30 posts about artists, I'm sure there'd be a political guy posting about 30 regimes we've probably never heard of, then someone would think it'd be great to expose 30 stand-up comics that are on the verge of breaking out, etc. You have to be careful and nip the behavior you don't care for before it demonstrates to everyone that it's new acceptable behavior.

Anyway, the site will be down for two weeks, starting tomorrow, so I guess it doesn't matter.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:56 PM on August 5, 2001

it seems that jc honestly wanted to post 30 artist links in 30 days. i like to think that links posted to metafilter should be kinda spontaneous rather than scheduled. i agree, i think it belongs on a personal weblog rather on mefi.

in fact, maybe the best solution is to announce the 30 artists in 30 days project on the mefi-projects list. you get some exposure for your project, without having to post one for every day on metafilter.
posted by moz at 9:22 PM on August 5, 2001

Good idea, moz.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:35 PM on August 5, 2001

i am a horrible monster and i pray for death.

that is all.
posted by jcterminal at 10:37 PM on August 21, 2001