Self-promotional thread on web hosting

August 23, 2001 3:48 PM

This is turning into some shameless promoting. People are promoting their own web hosting companies and from the comments they seem to know what they are doing is wrong...
posted by geoff. to Etiquette/Policy at 3:48 PM (8 comments total)

It looks to me like people are talking about web hosting companies they have used as customers. There's nothing wrong with promotion that isn't self-promotion, and self-promotion is OK as long as it's (a) not posted as a link on the front page, and (b) identified as a self-link.
posted by rcade at 7:30 PM on August 23, 2001

You could be right, but the general impression from some of the comments was that they were plugging their own company. Of course I could just be really paranoid but someone else did bring it up: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/9588#120119. It doesn't really matter now, at the rate of about one new front page post an hour it will be history rather quickly.
posted by geoff. at 7:37 PM on August 23, 2001

I think Mo was trying to say there that the initial post was a bit shady. I mean, if you understand the concept of MetaFilter, you understand that posting a single link to a webhost with a "how good are these guys?" question is not what it's about. Which is not to say even that he couldn't have asked people for their opinions on what webhost is best, but the question could have been posed in a far better way.
posted by zempf at 8:01 PM on August 23, 2001

I was tempted to put in a "never heard of 'em probably will pour sugar in your gas tank while anally raping your grandmother" but thought better of it.. maybe I should've after all....
posted by tj at 9:46 PM on August 23, 2001

on a related note.. I'm looking for a PHP/MySQL host.. any suggestions?
posted by tj at 9:47 PM on August 23, 2001

I think Mo was trying to say there that the initial post was a bit shady.

I agree with that, but a quick check didn't find anything to show it's a self-link.
posted by rcade at 5:26 AM on August 24, 2001

Still, the Mefi frontpage is not a forum to ask for opinions about personal decisions. Should I post to the front page and say:

I'm thinking of renting an apartment. Is this complex any good? Where do you guys live?

I don't think that's appropriate. How is that post any different?
posted by daveadams at 8:01 AM on August 24, 2001

dave:

while i agree that asking for a personal opinion isn't the wisest way to open up a thread, i think the criteria for whether a link can be posted or not should be whether the link is interesting and let that be it.
posted by moz at 8:11 AM on August 24, 2001