Good charity keeps plugging along April 3, 2007 10:44 AM   Subscribe

Remember Modest Needs? They turned five years old this week and hit one million dollars in funds dispersed since they started. In the anniversary post, the founder mentions they got their whole start thanks to that post on mefi.
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 10:44 AM (28 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite

But it's clear from reading that post that Brittanie knew the owners and made an FPP that would be frowned upon today, due to self-posting police.
posted by klangklangston at 11:01 AM on April 3, 2007


Yep. She'd be banned. The message would be deleted. And we wouldn't be talking about this, five years later.

2002 was truly a golden age for self-linkers.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:04 AM on April 3, 2007


More history.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:05 AM on April 3, 2007


And, hey, neat.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:06 AM on April 3, 2007


And the money shot from the man himself.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:08 AM on April 3, 2007


d'oh, I totally forgot about the Today show mention of mefi. The founder emailed me today and I thought "wow, I remember that site" and didn't know he considered the mefi post as the jumping off point.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:17 AM on April 3, 2007


Just more evidence that crime self-linking doesn't pay.
posted by Plutor at 11:33 AM on April 3, 2007


She'd never get away with that chicanery nowadays, not with what with it being a shithole and all.

Five sincere cheers for Modest Needs!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:46 AM on April 3, 2007


The shithole is borked.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 11:53 AM on April 3, 2007


I've unborked the shithole.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:54 AM on April 3, 2007


Half-assed unborking.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 11:57 AM on April 3, 2007


It's been fully re-unborked, thank you very much.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:58 AM on April 3, 2007


So they've given away a million Irish babies in just 5 years?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:21 PM on April 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


Oh administrator, please bork us! BIA
posted by carsonb at 12:24 PM on April 3, 2007


bork my foon, mortarforker.
posted by quonsar at 12:38 PM on April 3, 2007


MetaFilter: Unborking the shithole.
posted by ontic at 2:00 PM on April 3, 2007


(also, if anyone's wondering about Brittney, she's on the teevee now).
posted by ColdChef at 2:51 PM on April 3, 2007


Yay, mat! Your thing has brought good to the world.
posted by frecklefaerie at 3:21 PM on April 3, 2007


Klangklang, you have the wrong Brittney.
posted by Brittanie at 4:01 PM on April 3, 2007


Speaking of MetaFiltarians doing good, big props to MetaFilter's own tizzie who makes me want to be a better person.
posted by ColdChef at 4:58 PM on April 3, 2007


Good show, tizzie!

Irrespective of which, the video player at local12 segued immediately and jarringly into a story about tracking pedophiles.

posted by cortex (staff) at 5:02 PM on April 3, 2007


From mathowie's comment in that original metatalk thread

The point of a no self-link rule and frowning upon people posting things "for their friend" (self-link by proxy) is that it largely removes objectivity from judging whether or not something is good enough to be posted here.

Has any 'marginal case' been deleted from the front page because it wasn't good enough? I don't mean dupes, crap self-link blog posts or SLOE's. I'm referring to genuine posts that for whatever reason have been deleted because they weren't "good enough to be posted here." Have posts ever been deleted because they simply weren't good enough?

I ask in the context of a recent deluge of single link video posts with only the most cursory context.
posted by Pastabagel at 5:41 PM on April 3, 2007


Ever? Probably. I don't think Matt's been too heavy with the kill button historically, but meh stuff has certainly gotten axed, and I think how often depends on where you personally draw the "marginal" line.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:46 PM on April 3, 2007


"Klangklang, you have the wrong Brittney."

Sorry, Brittanie, but all spellings of a name default to the same person in my head. Even worse, I thought PinkStainlessTail and ThePinkSuperhero were the same person for a while. The handle just turned into "PinkSomethin'Somethin'."
posted by klangklangston at 6:55 PM on April 3, 2007


PinkSomethin'Somethin' would be a great user name.
posted by ColdChef at 7:00 PM on April 3, 2007


Awwwwwww, yeahhhhhh...
posted by PinkSomethin'Somethin' at 7:03 PM on April 3, 2007


Have posts ever been deleted because they simply weren't good enough?

Yes, but it's a pretty rare occurence. We see posts that are mostly Wikipedia links, post that are a link to a singleb log entry about nothing in particular, posts that are total nonsense (and not the fun kind) and, of course, posts to things that may have been cool before their bandwidth was exceeded for the rest of the month.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:02 PM on April 3, 2007


Oh my word.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:29 PM on April 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


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