Leeches
I was very puzzled by Phil Rignalda’s recent complaint about Trackback AutoDiscovery, and I said as much. But then (ironically, by reading a trackback on his post), it occurred to me that perhaps the problem wasn’t AutoDiscovery, but leaches.
The subject of Marcus’ (and perhaps Phil’s) concern was gratuitous trackback pings sent to “A-list” blogs by folks hoping that the resulting trackback link would drive some traffic back towards their own site. If that’s the problem then, of course, AutoDiscovery has nothing to do with it. The “leaches” would send their pings manually, if necessary.
If leaches (as opposed to inadvertent gratuitous pings) are the problem, then perhaps the solution, as Marcus suggests, is to refuse trackback pings from repeat offenders. Whether this is a “feature” of the blogging software, or simply done using .htaccess rules doesn’t really matter much.
Update: There’s also a discussion of these issues going on over at Adrian Frost’s blog. Since he didn’t trackback us, let’s trackback him. ;-)
Posted by distler at April 27, 2003 2:44 AM
Re: Leeches
No, at least for me leeches aren’t a problem (if someone wants some of my traffic, and can craft an excerpt that will get it for them, more power to them). The problem is that “ping them all, and let Phil sort them out” expects me to decide whether you add something to the conversation, and to shut you out if I don’t think you do. Maybe people with better social skills that mine can get away with that, but to me the idea of deleting pings that I don’t think should have been sent is just a huge minefield of hurt feelings.
If someone pings from a post that just says “You should read Phil’s post” then there’s no question (in my mind, that is) that the ping shouldn’t have been sent, but if someone pings from “You should read Phil’s post. This is important stuff, and I’m going to try it myself.” was that just an automatic ping that they don’t mind having deleted, or was it an intentional ping because they thought it added to the conversation? What about three sentences, adding “I think he overstates the case somewhat, but that’s just his way.”? You know whether you intend your post to become a part of a distributed conversation, or just to direct people into it elsewhere, I don’t, so I think you should decide whether or not to ping, and as much as possible I should allow you to decide.