I don't believe this is a longstanding decision, but I could be wrong. Matt is probably taking this stance because he knows that as the sites popularity increases, there's no way he can stop every self-linker out there. So if the content is good then at least that's something.

matt takes whatever stance he happens to find himself in at any given moment. no one person can possibly attain the kind of consistency required to moderate a site with no real guidelines. cue endless meta threads about the definition of good.

***say what, matt?***

If the State doesn't use the Ban Hammer every time, what will happen to society?

Matt shouldn't have said it aloud, though. Bit like jury nullification. Nice flexibility in being there, but you don't want to proactively inform the jury about it.

I'm gonna self-link when I can and I'll do it smart. It's too much to resist. It's not so much the hits as it'll be fooling MetaFilter. And If I get caught I will claim quality. Se you in MeTa.

How about raising the joining fee to $20 to discourage re-registration of baninated self-promoters?

I think that Matt should make people put out for membership. That would really weed out the bad ones.

Whew. Thank god I got in under the wire.

It's a slippery slope from $5 to $100.

Oh, wait, that's MeFi ad-economics!

;-)

don't people have to make a certain number of comments first anymore?
upping that number would weed out the bigger losers sooner, but i wonder if people don't understand the general reasoning and ethics of not self linking anymore and if people who've been "blogging" for over a decade have forgotten not everyone works by certain ethical codes anymore.

it's one thing to have a billistics and it's another to have a mediocre suckwad desperately begging for attention for whatever reason.

to the tune of goldigger:
i ain't sayin' no self linker
i ain't messin with no new filter
meritocracy's the goal, trigger
fuck the sign up

as far as consistency, i think he just doesn't know how to write or put the idea into words, but what the big deal with some decent guidelines?
it's the foolish consistency to beware of, and that's what all the dumber comments are always about when people just try to imitate other people.

raising the price won't help but it's not like quality control is part of it any more. he'll give free invite memberships, so maybe he should set up "membership gift certificates" for people to invite people that would help it.
i haven't been able to stomach askme in a while but the few culled recently for lifehacker were horrifying.
and lifehack could be almost as bad a word recreation as electronica

screw comments, some people should be allowed to make words, period.

(i want my five dollars back, hacksucker)

Nah, I swear he said the same thing back around 2000. Basically he can't police all users for self-links, unless they're dumb and put in too much information, like an e-mail at the domain they link to. The idea isn't so much to have a pure site free of any possible self-links but to keep out the low quality links.

not be allowed, that is

people just get all nutty about having a rule to smack someone in the head with.
that is what i remember as being the defense of not having any, that people would use them to beat each other to death with while accidentally excluding something cool.
or defining peramaters to work around to violate the letter of the law.

phhfftt.

self-links? Hasn't anyone else noticed the viral marketer types raoming around posting ad-links that lead to obvious seeding sites? I've watched posters whom I knew were professional seeders (since I know them, IRL) post their seeding jobs on Mefi, but it wasn't until they messed up and posted something that was easily pointed out as a self-link that I could flag it properly and the user was banned. Seeders and self-linkers are two sides of the same coin - seeders get paid for hits you know. But how do I flag a seeder?

oh maaan, I should read the links before opening my big mouth. That was the suspected seeder. Turns out he was self-linking. All is well again then, I guess. He ain't the only one though.

dabitch, feel free to drop me a friendly email if you suspect/know people are using MeFi to link to seeding sites.

Colour me ignorant, but what is a seeding site as opposed to a simple self link?

And don't get me wrong here. I am sure that self links can be quality posts but I just wonder if we are an ideological step away from "sponsored links" à la Fark. Not that MeFi would ever feature boobie links. *sigh*

I'm gonna self-link when I can and I'll do it smart. It's too much to resist. It's not so much the hits as it'll be fooling MetaFilter. And If I get caught I will claim quality. Se you in MeTa.

I'm sorry if I'm a little dense...you mean this as a joke or some other rhetorical structure, right? You're not really going to break the only steadfast rule the community has simply because you can, are you?

Yeah, sorry for the dumb stab at funny and no, I am not. My point is that it would be very tempting and the linked comment by mathowie seems to sanction creative/interesting self linking, whatever that might mean in terms of the quality of MeFi posts these days, and, most interestingly, even if it fools him.

I love reading MeFi because, with the help of an ad blocker, it is ad free and earnest. There is still a lot of the best of the web and that is entirely due to Matt's light touch. And a great part of the ad-free fun for me is the outing of self-linkers in MetaTalk (and all the other well-rounded bullshit that goes on there).

I don't have any content ATM worth self linking in a smart way, but if I did--and given that comment by the site owner--I would be *very* tempted to compose a "good" self link as it might be seen to be sanctioned and it would be a *great* way to promote whatever it is I might be promoting. IANAL and MeFi has no laws (strictly speaking, FSM bless mathowie's heart) but that comment got me thinking about how I could use MeFi for true viral marketing.

Oh, and I *heart* Kelley Ripa.

KO.