Comments on: Trackbacks, R.I.P.

By: KF

KF — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:08:22 +0000

I’ve contemplated a migration to WordPress on and off for quite some time now—in fact, you might see here, for instance—but have (a) been not so unhappy with ExpressionEngine that I’ve been driven to figure out how to (b) overcome the massive obstacle of EE’s total lack of proper exporting function. So, no migration to this point. The death of trackback may well make me re-contemplate.

Also, I could do another site redesign. Redesigning always makes me happy.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:55:24 +0000

Wordherders has been killed by spam (both comment and trackback) lately, to the point that even though MovableType captures the spam and deletes it, the strain on the server was such that our host shut the cgi down.

We’re discussing a migration to Wordpress, but with a dozen blogs and entries in the thousands, I find it a bit daunting.

So, in short, I hear ya.

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 02:22:24 +0000

I’ve found that the pingback system on Wordpress generates no spam - I switched to wordpress (from MoveableType) 3 months ago, and have had no comment or trackback spam since. I don’t know if you’re up for a platform migration, but I have nothing bad to say about WP…

By: KF

KF — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:33:16 +0000

But beyond the theory—the hyperlinks only work backward, like citations. The genius of the trackback was in letting those links work in both directions—your link to me registers on my blog as a link from me back to you. It works toward fulfilling Ted Nelson’s dream of the two-way link—and I feel its loss pretty acutely…

By: meg

meg — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:20:27 +0000

That’s the theory, sure. But trackbacks have never been the way I’ve followed a conversation or idea around the blogosphere. For me, it’s always plain old hyperlinks (soooo passé, dahling).

By: KF

KF — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:32:47 +0000

Yeah, but the great part about trackbacks is their use for readers other than me as a sort of “cited in” notation. I can tell who’s linking to me, but sometimes it’s useful for a reader to follow a conversation forward into other spaces.

By: meg

meg — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:05:38 +0000

I stopped sending trackbacks a while ago anyway. Doesn’t everybody look at their logs using one tool or another anyway, at least if they’re interested?