Trackbacks. Boo!

Destry · 2006-09-21 11:30:00

This topic comes up now and again about Txp. I’m confident that Textpattern will never go with Trackbacks, and that makes me very happy. But I thought it would be amusing to debate the topic anyway, because people either love or hate trackbacks. (Clearly I’m of the latter group.) If my intuition is right, this debate will be short-lived because counter arguments will not have much weight; but maybe I’m dead wrong and that’s what I want to find out, so give me your best reasons why trackbacks are worthwhile. Hint: you’ll probably have to say how they have worked for you in real life, not just say what they theorectically do (I’ve read wikipedia’s trackback info, so I guess I already know the theory part).

Now, just so the line is clearly drawn in the sand, here are my viewpoints against them:

Spam — or apparently called sping — on trackbacks is tantamount to flies on poop. (FAQ). That is reason enough to never have them.
Annoying as hell. I absolutely hate when I read a good article somewhere and start to dig into the comments too but find that 75% are redundant trackbacks (and that’s legite TBs, not spam). Funny thing is, this is exactly what they’e supposed to be good for, theoretically speaking, but I think they just break the flow of conversation and make everything disjunct %{color:red}01%
My own trackback theory: trackbacks are only popular with people who can’t get visitors by the merits of their own writing to begin with, so what a disappointment it must be for people (and an incredible waste of time) to follow trackbacks and find nothing but crap at the end of the trail. Probably 99% of the time, trackbacks are like flags that shout “Hey, hapless reader! Look at my proton in the galaxy. I write trackback posts, and occasionally a little fluff about my cat, Tunaboy.”
Trackbacks are a blog engine feature. Txp is a CMS. People who care should know that Txp already has a hard time dropping the blog engine image. (Any good CMS can be used as a blog engine, that doesn’t mean they are blog engines. You can’t always say the reverse, and that’s the distinction.) %{color:red}02%

%{color:red}01% Aside from not supporting trackbacks at all, I love the way Molly Holzschlag deals with them. Take this real-life example and her response to the befuddled Monsieur Olivier. Genious. Kill the trackback links, and perhaps the motivation for using them is gone. Then again, you could just choose to go with Textpattern over WordPress, or if you really want spingbacks you could just choose WordPress over Textpattern ;)

%{color:red}02% I admint this one is clearly Txp-related, and therefore not entirely relevant to the bigger picture I’m really after, but I thought I would mention it anyway because people will undoubtedly pull this debate to Txp sooner or later. I find it’s often better to just forego the needless debate about blog vs. CMS and call everything content publishing systems, that’s really what they do when it’s all said and done.

Sencer · 2006-09-21 13:10:02

Maybe it’s also helful for a discussion to make a distinction between “the idea behind Trackback”, and “the implementation/specification of Trackback”. While the latter is clearly flawed and broken by design (at least with respect to the internet; it may work in an intranet setting), I can understand the interest that the idea behind it drives. It’s geared towards the same needs that things like technorati or searchengines try to fill with their services. I can see the idea behind Trackpack (or Pingback or…) could work, if it could be coupled with identity and a web of trust – the problem is that these things would likely make it just enough complicated in terms of use and maintenance that it would never gather critical mass to take off.

hcgtv · 2006-09-21 13:31:13

Personally I have enough with all the referrer, comment and forum spam.

Anywhere a site has a way for someone to ingest their URL, it’s going to happen. I think it comes down to the I want syndrome – like I want a puppy but I don’t want to clean up after it.

reid · 2006-09-21 15:45:32

Sencer wrote:

It’s geared towards the same needs that things like technorati or searchengines try to fill with their services. I can see the idea behind Trackpack (or Pingback or…) could work, if it could be coupled with identity and a web of trust

I know this isn’t the place to fix MT/WP’s problems, nor am I a programmer, nor do I really care to have Trackback added to Txp …. but … if Technorati, Flickr, et al can provide us with API’s that allows spam-free data to be pulled into your site, couldn’t Six Apart do something similar by creating a centralized Trackback server? I know, it would take a complete reworking of their current system … but the current system is broken.

the problem is that these things would likely make it just enough complicated in terms of use and maintenance that it would never gather critical mass to take off.

I remember when Trackback first came out, that’s what many said about it … “too confusing and complicated, never gain critical mass” … yet here we are years later.

NyteOwl · 2006-09-22 01:55:53

And I’ll lay odds that Google at elast has been tweaking to minimize the ability to use trackbacks to game page rankings – not that those who deliberately use them for blackhat seo will pay any attention.

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#1 2006-09-21 11:30:00

Trackbacks. Boo!

#2 2006-09-21 13:10:02

Re: Trackbacks. Boo!

#3 2006-09-21 13:31:13

Re: Trackbacks. Boo!

#4 2006-09-21 15:45:32

Re: Trackbacks. Boo!

#5 2006-09-22 01:55:53

Re: Trackbacks. Boo!

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