Self links abound April 20, 2006 9:59 PM Subscribe
Self linking and the common good (mi)
Whoa - the first link above should go here. Although it's a fairly cool new Boards of Canada video in the first.
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:02 PM on April 20, 2006
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:02 PM on April 20, 2006
Nope. Slippery slope, all that. There aren't many hard and fast rules around here, but that one is a keeper, I'd say.
Self-link away in someone else's thread, if it's germane. Otherwise, don't. In my humble.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:09 PM on April 20, 2006
Self-link away in someone else's thread, if it's germane. Otherwise, don't. In my humble.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:09 PM on April 20, 2006
Well, your personal findings should serve you well as you build your personal site.
I like the current rule.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:11 PM on April 20, 2006
I like the current rule.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:11 PM on April 20, 2006
I always felt the hardline approach to self-links was rough because once in a blue moon there is something totally unique and worthy of a post here that no one else knows about.
But then, I setup MeFi Projects especially for that purpose and it works well for that. I was annoyed that user posted a link to their blog and acknowledged it, because the post a link page clearly states that behavior is grounds for a removal and ban.
The user posted it again as a comment, which I find annoying, like that was the only justification for the post on MeFi -- to drive traffic to their site. Now, the owner can say that wasn't the case at all and the content there is unique, but they seemed persistent at ignoring the one basic rule of the site, and then went around me to repost a link to their site.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:20 PM on April 20, 2006
But then, I setup MeFi Projects especially for that purpose and it works well for that. I was annoyed that user posted a link to their blog and acknowledged it, because the post a link page clearly states that behavior is grounds for a removal and ban.
The user posted it again as a comment, which I find annoying, like that was the only justification for the post on MeFi -- to drive traffic to their site. Now, the owner can say that wasn't the case at all and the content there is unique, but they seemed persistent at ignoring the one basic rule of the site, and then went around me to repost a link to their site.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:20 PM on April 20, 2006
I wasn't aware of the history for this one - just the general application of the rules, in general, sometimes gets in the way (IMHO) of the otherwise good readability of the site content, which is of foremost importance to me.
What is it about the rule that you like, ikkyu2?
I'm interested in the whole rule enforcement thing, particularly when it doesn't personally benefit the individual that sometimes vehemently defends it.
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:29 PM on April 20, 2006
What is it about the rule that you like, ikkyu2?
I'm interested in the whole rule enforcement thing, particularly when it doesn't personally benefit the individual that sometimes vehemently defends it.
posted by strawberryviagra at 10:29 PM on April 20, 2006
But then, I setup MeFi Projects especially for that purpose and it works well for that.
Well, wait a second, though. I'm pretty sure you've explicitly said that TealMe (sorry, I can't resist) is for larger-scale things that people have put together, rather than just posts to their blog and such. So, Projects isn't working well (and isn't intended to) for the purpose of self-linking in the way that we're talking about, and the way 0bvious did. Am I still misunderstanding something here?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:29 PM on April 20, 2006
Well, wait a second, though. I'm pretty sure you've explicitly said that TealMe (sorry, I can't resist) is for larger-scale things that people have put together, rather than just posts to their blog and such. So, Projects isn't working well (and isn't intended to) for the purpose of self-linking in the way that we're talking about, and the way 0bvious did. Am I still misunderstanding something here?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:29 PM on April 20, 2006
If Obvious had self-linked inside his post (as he was eventually forced to do), and marked it, I personally don't think that would have been as big a problem.
No self-links as part of an FPP seems like a good hard rule to me, with "use judgment" tacked onto what's linked to in-thread.
posted by namespan at 10:33 PM on April 20, 2006
No self-links as part of an FPP seems like a good hard rule to me, with "use judgment" tacked onto what's linked to in-thread.
posted by namespan at 10:33 PM on April 20, 2006
Am I still misunderstanding something here?
Yeah, the thing he linked was some ten page essay on existance or something. It wasn't just a teeny blog post.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:35 PM on April 20, 2006
Yeah, the thing he linked was some ten page essay on existance or something. It wasn't just a teeny blog post.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:35 PM on April 20, 2006
OK. I've got a metric shitload of old ten-page essays from my site I'm going to start pimping the hell out of on Projects.
No, not really. But you see what I'm saying.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:39 PM on April 20, 2006
No, not really. But you see what I'm saying.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:39 PM on April 20, 2006
*goes off to look for MT paginate plugin...*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:46 PM on April 20, 2006
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:46 PM on April 20, 2006
Love the video Strawberry - but think the one rule to rule them all must be upheld.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 10:50 PM on April 20, 2006
posted by Samuel Farrow at 10:50 PM on April 20, 2006
If it's a good site, you can always try emailing another metafilter member and they can post it for you. It brings a sense of objectivity to the process.
posted by dial-tone at 11:00 PM on April 20, 2006
posted by dial-tone at 11:00 PM on April 20, 2006
Actually - the video is a better subject for discussion... what was I thinking??
Do you think BoC are members here? I came across that image a few weeks ago on a mefi post and now they're using the entire video as their film clip, and the image as their EP cover. If you haven't watched it, check it out, some beautiful old skool surf action towards the end.
posted by strawberryviagra at 11:10 PM on April 20, 2006
Do you think BoC are members here? I came across that image a few weeks ago on a mefi post and now they're using the entire video as their film clip, and the image as their EP cover. If you haven't watched it, check it out, some beautiful old skool surf action towards the end.
posted by strawberryviagra at 11:10 PM on April 20, 2006
dial-tone wrote...
If it's a good site, you can always try emailing another metafilter member and they can post it for you. It brings a sense of objectivity to the process.
Ding ding ding! If you can't get at least one other person to stand up for it, it shouldn't be on the front page.
posted by tkolar at 12:04 AM on April 21, 2006
If it's a good site, you can always try emailing another metafilter member and they can post it for you. It brings a sense of objectivity to the process.
Ding ding ding! If you can't get at least one other person to stand up for it, it shouldn't be on the front page.
posted by tkolar at 12:04 AM on April 21, 2006
What is it about the rule that you like, ikkyu2?
I like that it prevents me from seeing many, many websites which are nowhere near as interesting as their creators thought they were.
It kind of goes back to the whole idea of the "filter."
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:07 AM on April 21, 2006
I like that it prevents me from seeing many, many websites which are nowhere near as interesting as their creators thought they were.
It kind of goes back to the whole idea of the "filter."
posted by ikkyu2 at 12:07 AM on April 21, 2006
Ditto on ikkyu2 about why I like it, and ditto on dial-tone about why it isn't in any way an insurmountable or even difficult barrier to quality FPPs.
posted by Bugbread at 1:38 AM on April 21, 2006
posted by Bugbread at 1:38 AM on April 21, 2006
I'm a pretty big believer in "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck" philosophy and if there are guerilla marketers that can manage to be acceptable mefites while guerilla marketing, then I don't think it's a problem until and unless we catch unacceptable behavior.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:53 AM on April 21, 2006
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:53 AM on April 21, 2006
OK, so, hypothetically speaking, if I were to make a FPP which contained no self links, is it considered a bannable offence if say, 5, 6, 7 or more comments in thread, I did a self link? Even if there was a legit reason for it?
Also, can I pimp my crappy livejournal on Projects?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:53 AM on April 21, 2006
Also, can I pimp my crappy livejournal on Projects?
posted by Effigy2000 at 2:53 AM on April 21, 2006
can I pimp my crappy livejournal
well you could cross-post all your posts from there to here...
The self-link rule makes sense to me. If you can't find a single other person who thinks your link is worth posting, a link that just happens to be something that you did, or that you were involved with, then maybe it's not as good as you think. It's easy to post a link in the comments if for some unlikely reason it's the only go-to thing on the Internet about your topic. It's also easy to find other good stuff on the Internet to post. I also think 0bvious was being lame in that thread both with the "please bend the rules of for" FPP and then reposting the link in-thread.
Having a firm self-link rule means that we don't have to guess at how much someone was invovled or how good a post might be despite the self-link and the penalties are stiff enough that we don't have to go chasing down potential self-linkers all the time. I don't want to have to think about someone's motives, that just leads to Meta fights. My feeling is that what we have now mostly works, the downside being that people can be overzealous outing alleged self-linkers and once in a blue moon, someone is prevented from linking something really cool.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:30 AM on April 21, 2006
well you could cross-post all your posts from there to here...
The self-link rule makes sense to me. If you can't find a single other person who thinks your link is worth posting, a link that just happens to be something that you did, or that you were involved with, then maybe it's not as good as you think. It's easy to post a link in the comments if for some unlikely reason it's the only go-to thing on the Internet about your topic. It's also easy to find other good stuff on the Internet to post. I also think 0bvious was being lame in that thread both with the "please bend the rules of for" FPP and then reposting the link in-thread.
Having a firm self-link rule means that we don't have to guess at how much someone was invovled or how good a post might be despite the self-link and the penalties are stiff enough that we don't have to go chasing down potential self-linkers all the time. I don't want to have to think about someone's motives, that just leads to Meta fights. My feeling is that what we have now mostly works, the downside being that people can be overzealous outing alleged self-linkers and once in a blue moon, someone is prevented from linking something really cool.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:30 AM on April 21, 2006
I like that it prevents me from seeing many, many websites which are nowhere near as interesting as their creators thought they were.
It kind of goes back to the whole idea of the "filter."
Yeah, ikkyu2 has it right. But of course people find it hard to see this when it's their own special baby that's involved.
posted by languagehat at 4:46 AM on April 21, 2006
It kind of goes back to the whole idea of the "filter."
Yeah, ikkyu2 has it right. But of course people find it hard to see this when it's their own special baby that's involved.
posted by languagehat at 4:46 AM on April 21, 2006
What ikkyu2 said. Not to mention the fact that you have to be pretty obtuse to post a self-link. It shows either an inability to read or contempt for how this community works. People who willfully ignore the warning on the posting page don't really give a shit about this place and shouldn't be here.
posted by fuzz at 6:25 AM on April 21, 2006
posted by fuzz at 6:25 AM on April 21, 2006
OK. I've got a metric shitload of old ten-page essays from my site I'm going to start pimping the hell out of on Projects.
At the rate of one a month, I'm not sure we're talking Hell-pimpin' stavros. And posting a collection all at once is even less of a littering. And shining goose-eggs would probably sway you to lay off if the essays were shite. &c.
posted by cortex at 6:29 AM on April 21, 2006
At the rate of one a month, I'm not sure we're talking Hell-pimpin' stavros. And posting a collection all at once is even less of a littering. And shining goose-eggs would probably sway you to lay off if the essays were shite. &c.
posted by cortex at 6:29 AM on April 21, 2006
What's the problem with self-linking if you don't make any money from your site? I thought the point was to stop people from selling things/getting ad revenue. If I have something relevant to an FPP that I've written about before, there shouldn't be a problem. I actually would lose money, in my case, because I have no ads and my host would charge me for the spike in bandwidth.
Or is it a "no ads" then 2-4 days later "Oh look there are ads!" thing? Is it the access to the content that the poster has, and the ability to change it?
Just curious.
posted by Eideteker at 7:18 AM on April 21, 2006
Or is it a "no ads" then 2-4 days later "Oh look there are ads!" thing? Is it the access to the content that the poster has, and the ability to change it?
Just curious.
posted by Eideteker at 7:18 AM on April 21, 2006
What's the problem with self-linking if you don't make any money from your site?
The problem is that you should not be using MetaFilter to promote your own stuff, except on Projects. The site is nominally for sharing "neat stuff on the web" with the community. People have a tendency to overestimate the interestingness of their own creations, sort of like how parents think their own babies are the cutest thing ever. If your post idea is that interesting, someone else will surely come along and make a FPP for you.
Secondly, it's a pain to police if the guideline is "You can't promote things that you'll make money off of" because even if you don't have ads on your site, there are other ways to profit from increased eyeballs. It's easier for us not to have to worry about your motives and just have a hard and fast rule saying "don't do this" It's not so much the money angle as the first point, in any case, but money complicates it and makes people even more annoyed at lame self-links.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:29 AM on April 21, 2006
The problem is that you should not be using MetaFilter to promote your own stuff, except on Projects. The site is nominally for sharing "neat stuff on the web" with the community. People have a tendency to overestimate the interestingness of their own creations, sort of like how parents think their own babies are the cutest thing ever. If your post idea is that interesting, someone else will surely come along and make a FPP for you.
Secondly, it's a pain to police if the guideline is "You can't promote things that you'll make money off of" because even if you don't have ads on your site, there are other ways to profit from increased eyeballs. It's easier for us not to have to worry about your motives and just have a hard and fast rule saying "don't do this" It's not so much the money angle as the first point, in any case, but money complicates it and makes people even more annoyed at lame self-links.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:29 AM on April 21, 2006
For cases like the Switching off post, how about a google cache link that indirectly references your own page?
posted by Chuckles at 8:21 AM on April 21, 2006
posted by Chuckles at 8:21 AM on April 21, 2006
Pretty much what I thought, Jess. I can just foresee occasions where I might want to FPP something that I've also already talked about on my webpage (currently defunct) or livejournal. I'd only ever think of doing it as the last of 7 or 8 links in an FPP, certainly not as a standalone. So is it still ok to do it in a comment (to your own FPP), as long as you clearly identify it as a self link?
Then again, if I were going to do it, I'd probably e-mail you and Matt with a draft of the FPP and ask for approval.
posted by Eideteker at 9:48 AM on April 21, 2006
Then again, if I were going to do it, I'd probably e-mail you and Matt with a draft of the FPP and ask for approval.
posted by Eideteker at 9:48 AM on April 21, 2006
I've done just that and have been told that it would be OK to post the self link as part of a comment (from Jess).
In my case it was a scanned newspaper article that was already on my site (where I keep press clippings from the mid 90s). It was going to be the opening link that introduced the discussion and also the other reference links for the FPP (I should add that it's just a personal site which I use mainly for transferring files, etc).
The alternatives:
-> I could have transferred the gif file to an independent image hosting server and that would have been that (although I don't have much faith in third party sites and don't really understand what they derive from providing such a service, other than potentially going offline in a short period of time).
-> Changed the dynamic of the post and put the self link within the comments section (although that too seems to be questionable - what's the robots deal with links within comments?).
I ended up putting it in the too hard basket (such is my lack of imagination and time).
posted by strawberryviagra at 4:55 PM on April 21, 2006
In my case it was a scanned newspaper article that was already on my site (where I keep press clippings from the mid 90s). It was going to be the opening link that introduced the discussion and also the other reference links for the FPP (I should add that it's just a personal site which I use mainly for transferring files, etc).
The alternatives:
-> I could have transferred the gif file to an independent image hosting server and that would have been that (although I don't have much faith in third party sites and don't really understand what they derive from providing such a service, other than potentially going offline in a short period of time).
-> Changed the dynamic of the post and put the self link within the comments section (although that too seems to be questionable - what's the robots deal with links within comments?).
I ended up putting it in the too hard basket (such is my lack of imagination and time).
posted by strawberryviagra at 4:55 PM on April 21, 2006
I sort of feel like we've had this conversation before. Strawberryviagra, using your own content as the jumping off point for a post is not a good idea. While people have discussed this here back and forth, in short if you are providing the main content for the FPP (your own GIF or a GIF on some image server) it breaks the spirit of the self-link rule. Similarly even if you move a self-link to one of the first comments, if it's a primary source for the post, it still looks sketchy. Using the first comment to just-barely evade the self-link rule is not much of an improvement. In short, MetaFilter is about neat stuff on the web, hosting an image of a newspaper article in order to discuss it isn't really what MetaFilter is for. I'm sure there's some sort of grande exception, but that's my gut feeling.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:42 PM on April 21, 2006
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:42 PM on April 21, 2006
Sometimes neat stuff on the web only becomes so when there is some cohesive element that brings it to that state. There are things that are worthy of discussion that preceded the web, that despite the ubiquity of the current state of the web, aren't online. The quality of sites like mefi (can) give reason to build these connections and bring them to this state.
But having said this, I definitely see the reasons and respect the rules that are in place (caveat for the GYOFB responses).
posted by strawberryviagra at 6:03 PM on April 21, 2006
But having said this, I definitely see the reasons and respect the rules that are in place (caveat for the GYOFB responses).
posted by strawberryviagra at 6:03 PM on April 21, 2006
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
Maybe if the admins could at least move the self link within the comments after editing the FPP, that would make some sense? (the link did eventually reappear, but it's not always gauranteed that will happen).
posted by strawberryviagra at 9:59 PM on April 20, 2006