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TrackBack Spam complaints
The last days I sent out some more trackbacks for posts on subjects I found especially interesting and noticed that other bloggers wrote about already before…
I wanted to emphasize on the basic idea of trackback
In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.
according to movabletype.org's explanation (the inventors of trackback)
...means simply: notify others that you wrote about the same thing – that's how the weblogging meta-network could actually grow from my point of view…
...and it's very usable: it works from within my weblog – without using other's comment-forms… I just have to identify their trackback-address when I came across their post – no need to fill out those forms again… great stuff!
Person A has written a post on his own weblog that comments on a post in Person B's weblog. This is a form of remote comments—rather than posting the comment directly on Person B's weblog, Person A posts it on his own weblog, then sends a TrackBack ping to notify Person B.
... hmmm – looks like no RTFM case – to notify Person B was my intention.
But some days later it seems that part of blogger-community complained about getting a trackback ping without a specific link to their post in my article (Erik, Jason)
or even receiving "trackback spam" as Heiko , scsy , and Cheah Chu Yeow went out to call it in their public posts…
Wow – I am surprised by this feedback.
Thank you Heiko and Cheah – I didn't expect others to see "check this related post"-trackback pings as spam… and want to apologize if you feel offended by this behaviour.
I also encourage you to delete my trackback posts or even put me in your deny or blacklist if that is what you feel is the proper reaction on this.
But I would also like to start a discussion and demand more feedback on what you think proper trackback usage would be.
- shall I create a section with "other blogs I found on this subject" with your URLs ?
- do you think it might be interesting to list the MT SentPings list (a list of trackback.cgi – URLs with partial interest for the user because it doesn't lead to the post itself as I found) ?
- do you want to restrict Trackback Usage to ping only the directly linked post ?
Thank you, merry x-mas & happy new year!
Christoph C. Cemper
PS: to /bin/blog's wtf : cemper is my surname
PPS: Stavros comment on this was rather funny but I would go as far as him
PPPS: in my opinion increased trackbacking can help spread the word about initiatives like Google Bombs better and faster than manual commenting.
PPPPS: spent some time on this – but still no spellchecker in Opera – sorry.
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Comments
TrackBack Spam complaints
Christoph, I think you're sort of "overusing" trackback here. We live in a time where spammers use automatic MT comments to increase their Google ranking and everyone's waiting for trackback spam to happen.
An only loosely related ping coming from a site like yours, which is made up in a highly "professional" way (just look at your body language in the portrait), is simply bound to cause distrust. I simply don't want my blog to be used as a medium for promoting someone else's business. And that's what seemed to be happening here.
The way I've come to understand trackback is more closely related to your second quote from the MT documentation: Trackback as a way of commenting someone else's blog entry, but on my own blog. I also always link back to the respective entry, because trackback doesn't do that for me.
TrackBack Spam complaints
I may not be any sort of authority on TrackBack, but I would let people judge for themselves.
This is the entry you sent a TrackBack ping to: http://blog.codefront.net/archives/2003/11/03/the_monthly_report_october_2003.php
This is the entry you wrote (from which the TrackBack ping was sent: http://weblog.cemper.com/a/200312/28-estimate-your-pagerank-without-the-google-toolbar.php
The only similarity as far as I can see is that I happened to have mentioned "Google PageRank". I don't see how that is "related post" as in the "check this related post" parlance you mentioned in your entry.
No worries though, I think you are more misguided than malignant :).
>> shall I create a section with "other blogs I found on this subject" with your URLs ?
Yes, if in your case you want your readers to know what you found that is related, which I think is your initial intention. This is much better than sending a TrackBack ping to something that is only marginally related because people (like me) would tend to believe it to be TrackBack spam. People don't appreciate this because your ping, if listed, becomes a backlink to your site. On the other hand, people usually don't mind a free link back to their site.
>> do you think it might be interesting to list the MT SentPings list?
By all means do so, but your make your TrackBack pings discreetly.
Cheers!
TrackBack Spam complaints
No offense, Christoph. If what you wrote had been related to posts in my weblog, I think a TrackBack would have been very appropriate indeed. But relation based on a set of key words only? In times when comment spammers use that exact pattern to get attention?
But hey, I am glad we are having this discussion now. Maybe I am just over-sensitive...
TrackBack Spam complaints
Please do remove my extraneous TrackBacks that got in when I edited and re-published my entry. Thanks!
Oh and in answer to this: do you want to restrict Trackback Usage to ping only the directly linked post? Nope there is no need to IMHO, so long as your entry is related enough. Of course, your definition of "enough" may be totally different from mine :).
TrackBack Spam complaints
I think you should link to the posts when you send a ping if something someone else wrote guided you on the path to enlightenment (good or bad).
[q]I like blah blah and I caught the link from bill. Paul said blah blah was lame and I trend to agree with him, sorry bill. Sally said that it's a male thing but who cares about sal :D Etc...
[/q]
or "Trackbacks sent to Bill, Sally, Paul, Graham, Phill and Gregor as they all had interesting wordma on this topic. Check them out...."
Pinging people because you foundthem via a meta blog tool (Technorati, blogdex, blogvision, blogmatcher Etc) on the topic your posting about is just lame IMHO .. "You are not the most important person in the world". But if someont pointed you at something you felt compelled to blog about then giving attribution and a ping is good karma imho.
TrackBack Spam complaints
I'm sorry. Your excuse just doesn't cut it:
I keep a public comment posting policy that you are requested to read before sending either a trackback ping or making a comment.
The policy clearly states that
a) Trackbacks are remote comments
b) Any comment that appear to be created solely for the purpose of advertising for a site or service is considered spam
c) Off-topic comments are deleted without notice.
Regarding b): The entry from which you had sent the trackback was not related (meaning it falls into category c), and did not contain any link from your site to mine.
What you have done is equivalent to locating e-mail addresses from a newsgroup, and mailing every participant individually, asking them to read your comment and visiting your site, just because you think some of them could find it "interesting".
TrackBack Spam complaints
I agree with Arve, Chris, Cheah, Heiko and others that have commented; I too got a couple of veeeeerly vaguely connected trackbacks, which do seem to serve only as pagerank boosters for yourself... Sorry, Mr Cemper, but better luck next time (if you write something relevant I'll link to you instead; voluntarily?)
TrackBack Spam complaints
Firstly ..i have been blogging barely 2 weeks now and just put a blog at http://www.splashhall.org/thunder_blog.html ..i find the networking concept of blogging very interesting ..but (even after readin several post here) ..i dont understand the "trackback" thing ..is it that you leave a comment on someone else's blog ..with a link back to your blog ..how do you know when you have been pinged by someone ..i really have a lot to learn about blogging ..i really need a blog mentor ..