Can I post this to Projects?

January 28, 2006 8:37 AM

I recorded a lecture from a darn-good semi-prominent speaker on Wednesday and I'd like to post the recording on Projects. Several questions: Does the fact that I recorded the lecture make it a Projects post or is it okay for the Blue? Is it okay to post a rapidshare.de link to the WMA file as the project (or blue) post? If it is a Projects post, is it okay to post links-not-by-me in the Projects post to give some background on the speaker? Thanks.
posted by By The Grace of God to Feature Requests at 8:37 AM (32 comments total)

CRAP. Can this be changed to an etiquette-policy category thread, editors? Apologies.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:38 AM on January 28, 2006

I would say that since it's not a lecture YOU gave, it's not your work. Therefore, in my view it'd be okay to post it in the blue (with some supporting commentary and further links, hopefully).
posted by killdevil at 8:43 AM on January 28, 2006

If it's something you made or it's posted on your site it needs to be on Projects. This includes things you recorded. If you built it, you shouldn't post it to MeFi, mainly so that you're not conflating your interest in the subject with the item's worthiness as an FPP.

Projects is for highlighting, well, Projects. If it's just a good lecture but not a site or work-in-progress then it only sort of belongs there. If you're building a site about the speaker, or the topic the speaker talked about, then added links should go on that site. Projects isn't really for FPPs that include self-links. On the other hand, it's probably the least restrictive part of the site in terms of what you can post there.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:44 AM on January 28, 2006

Well, I'm not building a site about it. I'm extremely sorry that there's not really a place for it here and that I won't be able to share it with the community. Thanks, all the same, for your speedy response.
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:48 AM on January 28, 2006

Now that you've posted here, you can always include the link in your profile.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:51 AM on January 28, 2006

ideas.metafilter.com?
posted by MetaMonkey at 8:53 AM on January 28, 2006

Do you have the speaker's permission?
posted by LarryC at 8:54 AM on January 28, 2006

tapesharing.metafilter.com?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:56 AM on January 28, 2006

I think I was suggesting that many people would find a place to discuss ideas useful - for example a fair number of AskMe posts seem to be aimed not at getting a question answered, but discussing the questioner's idea(s), either about a project of theirs, or some specific topic. Or where there is no way to contruct a useful FPP.

On the other hand, this is probably just Chatfilter, so never mind.
posted by MetaMonkey at 9:07 AM on January 28, 2006

email me the link. if I enjoy it, I'll post it on the front page.
posted by crunchland at 9:08 AM on January 28, 2006

I do have the speaker's permission, Larry. and thanks jessamyn I will put the thing in the profile.

Matt, tapesharing.metafilter.com is a great idea - lots of features would be possible, for example some way of hosting small files; determined technical standards and copyright/fair use standards for files; use of projects voting system and/or commenting and flagging however you wish. Recording is definitely in an epistemological gray zone between Projects and the Blue.
posted by By The Grace of God at 9:08 AM on January 28, 2006

Crunchland, are you on the jabber server?
posted by By The Grace of God at 9:13 AM on January 28, 2006

metafilter: there's not really a place for it here
posted by quonsar at 9:29 AM on January 28, 2006

well I sent crunchland the post, if he doesn't like it I'll throw the link into my profile tomorrow.
posted by By The Grace of God at 9:58 AM on January 28, 2006

Gaming the System 101

"email me the link. if I enjoy it, I'll post it on the front page."

posted by mischief at 10:14 AM on January 28, 2006

mischief: "go to #mefi and see if someone will post it for you" was advised continually not two years back. I don't really think this is all that different.
posted by Ryvar at 10:26 AM on January 28, 2006

What about google video, or one of the other video hosting services? As long as it isn't hosted on your site it will be valid post material. A torrent even, but then I think you would have to find something independently worthy because a lot of people will complain that 'this isn't the best of the bittorrent network, it is best of the web. Get it? W-E-B, web!' and stuff like that...
posted by Chuckles at 10:40 AM on January 28, 2006

It's an audio recording. :( I think posting it to google video and not disclosing my connection with it would get me well yelled at, anyway.
posted by By The Grace of God at 10:49 AM on January 28, 2006

ryvar: gaming the system is gaming the system, even when it is tolerated.
posted by mischief at 10:58 AM on January 28, 2006

so you'd rather have the usual shit posts or what?
posted by puke & cry at 11:02 AM on January 28, 2006

mischief, it's not gaming the system if someone unconnected to the original person honestly thinks it's a worthy post. I trust crunchland isn't anyone's shill here.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:05 AM on January 28, 2006

As long as it isn't hosted on your site it will be valid post material.

I don't think that's the rule.
posted by cillit bang at 11:27 AM on January 28, 2006

Define 'unconnected'.
posted by mischief at 11:34 AM on January 28, 2006

I'm extremely sorry that there's not really a place for it here

It sounded to me like Jessamyn gave the green light. Did I read that wrong?
posted by scarabic at 11:58 AM on January 28, 2006

Fear not, purists. I just declined to post the item, not because of the quality of the content, but because of my lack of qualifications to pull off posting on the subject.
posted by crunchland at 12:46 PM on January 28, 2006

By The Grace of God,

why don't you link to it from your userpage so more people can listen then?
posted by dness2 at 1:26 PM on January 28, 2006

Thanks again for the offer, crunchland. I've added the post to my profile, and taken the opportunity to go a little longer in describing and analyzing it than I would in an ordinary FPP. The speaker is an expert on Palestine giving an in-depth and deeply personal analysis of the election of Hamas.
posted by By The Grace of God at 1:28 PM on January 28, 2006

It sounded to me like Jessamyn gave the green light. Did I read that wrong?

I said, and clarified to BtGoG over chat, that I thought it would be acceptable on Projects though sort of a stretch if it had a bunch of added links, and not at all okay for the Blue. I don't think it's gaming the system to show your link around to someone else to see if they thing it's worthwhile FPP material. I think that's one of the things that Projects is supposed to be for, and one thing that the MeFi spinoff sites also do really well.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:11 PM on January 28, 2006

Performing an essentially-unedited recording of someone to which you have no compromising connection seems like it ought to be kosher. That is, there is a difference between recording something to which you have some contributing interest (your friend's band, your girlfriend's brother's audio essay) and merely recording something that you had an objective interest in (a speaker in whom you take an interest but who with whom you have no mutual social involvement).

I see the former as treading into the forbidden zone of self-linking; the latter is, in my opinion, less tainted by such problems. Of course, there is dangerous subjectivity here: if I declare my interest in Speaker Foo as purely objective, and you suspect (based perhaps on the low quality of Foo's speech) that I am in fact subjectively compromised and posting something that oughtn't stand on it's own, well, we've got trouble. But if it's clear-cut, if the merit is there, I think it should be allowable.

Compare it to another example: a transcription of an un-postable audio stream in the furtherance of a post. If a user found, say, an old LP, or a wax cylindar, or whatever you want to contrive for the example, and the contents of the recording were good but providing the recording itself was not possible, someone might well transcribe the recording. The transcription itself is essentially a mechanical act -- the transcriber is not investing anything but time into the process.

Should that transcription be considered self-linkery? Regardless, of course, of where it is posted, be it on the user's blog (with disclaimer!), or on some independent web space that can not be tied to the posting user. If the transcribed material has merit, and the intent of the user is to share that material of merit by the necessary mechanism (because it would not be available otherwise), what's the verdict?

I think that this grey zone is an interesting one. I'd argue that, for one, there would be (and has been) no issue with a poster providing a mirror of content that is hosted on a frail server, all else being equal. Here, again, a user with unindictable intentions is in the clear -- their selection of a mirror is an act of kindness to the community, in making the content available.

So how do we delineate mirroring from self-linking?

Is mirroring on your own webspace something to which you have no subjective tie, and which would not be (or remain, under any MeFi-level traffic load) otherwise available a violation of the posting standards?

Is linking to something to which you do have a subjective tie (be it co-authorship or friend-of-friendship or hardcore fanboyism [another grey zone!]), but which you have made available through obfuscated channels (anonymous mirror, personal webspace not apparently tied to your MeFi user identity) a violation of posting standards?

I'd say the answers should be no and yes, respectively; but as it is, the likely functional results are the opposite -- posting to your own webspace is damning, whereas a slick self-linker can easily bury any evidence linking them to the content presented.

Also, I've had like three cups of tea this afternoon and had a really good night's sleep. Apologies for going on at such great length; this shit just fascinates me sometimes.
posted by cortex at 4:43 PM on January 28, 2006

We had this discussion about scanned comics a while back and I think it broke down into a few sub-issues:

- MeFi is supposed to be about great stuff on the web, therefore putting stuff on the web just to put it on MeFi is sort of stretching the purpose of MeFi. We've seen good and bad examples of people doing this.

- Putting up things that you have a vested interest in, even just by caring enough to record the speech etc, may compromise your objectivity enough to determine whether it would make a good FPP. The assumption is that good content will find another way here (see crunchland's example) and that the more someone feels like something reallyreallyreally needs to be here is often in inverse proportion to the degree other people will feel that way.

- With that in mind, axe-grind-filter and agendafilter posts usually suck, and even if it's just a nice "Hey everyone, you really need to recycle!" there's a sense in which being TOO passionate about the subject of your post can raise flags (brownpau's posts lately have gotten some of this sort of attention). I'm not saying this is one of them, but we do know that most, almost all, Israel/Palestine posts go badly here, so I'd be extra cautious about posting anything that loosely fell under that subject, speaking to this specific case.

I agree with what you're saying, it's an interesting topic, to think about what degree of involvement with a site is too much involvement from a self-link perspective. Even though MeFi is sort of big and wide-ranging, it's also small enough that looking at the really on-the-fence issues on a case-by-case basis is still something that MeTa works well for.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:08 PM on January 28, 2006

I agree with everything you just said, basically.

For one:

Putting up things that you have a vested interest in, even just by caring enough to record the speech etc, may compromise your objectivity enough to determine whether it would make a good FPP.

That's the unknowable, the great sticky tarpit that makes it such a difficult judgement. I gloss over it a little bit in the above, and I realize that I am being optimistic in doing so.

On the other hand, there is a difficulty here:

MeFi is supposed to be about great stuff on the web, therefore putting stuff on the web just to put it on MeFi is sort of stretching the purpose of MeFi. We've seen good and bad examples of people doing this.

The only difference between "putting something on the web just to post it" and "finding something on the web" is the identity of the put-er, basically. As the site grows and the membership encompasses more and more people with (arguably) objective interests in interesting things, we effectively reduce the scope of things we can post to.

I know there's a degree of silliness to that argument: we've gone from 1000 active posters vs. 6 billion other people to 5000 active posters vs. 6 billion other people, and so, yes, the damage is not done. But the principle sticks in my head.

I'll try and track down that comics-scanning thread, though; it sounds like some of this was discussed there.
posted by cortex at 5:48 PM on January 28, 2006

Well, I'd love to hear what anyone thinks of the actual content I offered for posting, send me an email or whatever if you want..
posted by By The Grace of God at 3:16 AM on January 29, 2006