Post on the Blue and in my blog without self linking?

July 8, 2006 9:52 PM

If I talk about something on my blog, and then I post about it on metafilter without pointing to my blog -- am in trouble? Such as this. I realize this post was deleted and it really doesn't matter, but I was curious about the practice / policy.
posted by bigmusic to Etiquette/Policy at 9:52 PM (10 comments total)

You can post about it in both places, as long as the link you post here isn't a link to your blog. You can even link to your blog in the comments section of the post, but it can't appear on the front page.
posted by crunchland at 9:56 PM on July 8, 2006

No, it's not a problem.
posted by delmoi at 10:09 PM on July 8, 2006

No it's not a problem, assuming that whatever you wrote about on your blog isn't some sort of viral meme that you're trying to launch by alluding to it on MeFi. On the other hand, we have seen axe grinding posts in the past that were basically cut and pastes from the user's own blog and that gets old pretty quick especially if there is some agendafilter aspect to the topic. If you think it's something that would interest the MeFi community and you're not just thinking "wow, enough people don't see this on my own blog" it seems totally fine to me.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:09 AM on July 9, 2006

posts about obesity never go well at this place
posted by pyramid termite at 6:27 AM on July 9, 2006

I am the original poster of the deleted post.

I posted the original news story that pointed to Yahoo's site. I did blog about it, but I didn't have a link to my blog site. I really thought it was a very interesting topic and wanted to hear everyone else's opinion. Obesity gets a lot of attention these days.

I did email Matt on why it was removed a few minutes after it was posted. Here is his respons:

"I removed it because it was just a news story off the wire (news is usually frowned upon unless it's something novel or especially unique) and your post was also loaded with opinion on a hot topic (obesity) that has been done many times on MetaFilter, and it has always ended in horrible trainwreck threads where people call fat people lazy while everyone else calls them jerks.

You lobbed a grenade into the crowd basically, and I removed it."

I could see his point, but maybe a bit more posting freedom and a bit less moderation will make it more interesting. Anyway, I am new to MetaFilter and it was my very first post. There starts the learning curve I guess. Cheers!
posted by TurkeyWalk at 8:07 AM on July 9, 2006

maybe a bit more posting freedom and a bit less moderation will make it more interesting

oh no, it is already plenty interesting.
posted by casconed at 9:07 AM on July 9, 2006

TurkeyWalk : "I could see his point, but maybe a bit more posting freedom and a bit less moderation will make it more interesting."

Well, yes, it would be interesting, in the same way that train wrecks are interesting. Whenever obesity, or circumcision, or Israel/Palestine, or a number of other hot topics come up, you get to see people go totally batshit insane. And it is very interesting. However, I can certainly understand Matt, the operator of the railway company, not wanting interesting train wrecks to happen.

Besides which, flameouts are infinitely more interesting than hot topic train wrecks, and have the extra bonus that usually the only person with hard feelings afterwards is the person who flamed out, and is no longer here. With hot button train wrecks, the participants are still MeFi users, so their hard feelings and hostilities remain at the site, and that's not good for discourse in general.
posted by Bugbread at 9:27 AM on July 9, 2006

maybe a bit more posting freedom and a bit less moderation will make it more interesting.

Hi TurkeyWalk, it's true that topics that get a lot of people fervently involved can be interesting, but they also bring out the worst in the site which started out as some sort of "best of the web" filter and now is more about good links and discussion, sometimes newsy, often not. People rehash the same arguments (in this case, whether obesity is or is not a cultural or medical problem and why fat people are fat and lots of fat jokes and fat defensiveness) and very little is learned or revealed.

There was a MetaTalk thread a few weeks ago, or maybe last month, that outlined a lot of these hot button topics, and you're at a disadvantage of sorts for not being around for the first 20-30 obesity threads which became predictable in their sameness and vitriol and which many of the old-timers remember with a mix of nostalgia and regret. In any case, welcome to the site. There's not really any negative implication associated with having a post removed [as long as it's not a spammy self-link] so feel free to try again when you feel that you've found something worthwhile or interesting.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:26 AM on July 9, 2006

The reason for deletion was hilarious.
posted by JanetLand at 10:40 AM on July 9, 2006

I could see his point, but maybe a bit more posting freedom and a bit less moderation will make it more interesting a horrible no-mans land of flames and bile that no one would want to read.

There, now that sentence makes sense.
posted by LarryC at 1:04 PM on July 9, 2006