Dean's World

No More Trackbacks?

Dean

I'm seriously considering disabling trackbacks. Dean's World gets something on the order of a hundred trackback spams a day. While the fine folks at Powerblogs have added a filtering feature, it's still a grind to have to ban so many trackbacks a day.

How many of you out there actually follow trackbacks?

Posted by Dean | Permalink | Technorati Trackbacks

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Gerbera Tetra (mail) (www):

Trackwatsits?

In otehr wors no, not really ever..

4.6.2005 2:30am

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Simon (www):

I certainly do. I would do it almost as often as I read the comments. It's a good way to see what others are saying about a post but might be too big or tangential for a comment.

4.6.2005 2:54am

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Andrew Cory (mail) (www):

Well, I do. Mainly for vanity reasons..

4.6.2005 3:29am

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Chris Reid (www):

Hmm, I would have thought it'd be tough to trackback this site. I've long since given up ever trying to trackback entries here as they never seem to go through anyway.

Anyway, no. I pretty much lost interest in following trackbacks months ago. That's so 2004.

4.6.2005 3:40am

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Rhianna (aka rmschoon) (mail) (www):

I follow Trackbacks on articles that I'm interested in...that's probably about 60% of the time or so.

4.6.2005 4:12am

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Dean Esmay:

Chris: I'd be curious to know what happens when you try to trackback here. It obviously works for others.

4.6.2005 5:11am

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Paul Burgess (www):

Dean, I do follow trackbacks. Not near as often as I follow comments, but not so very rarely, either.

Also, I've sent you a trackback ping on occasion, and I've never noticed any trouble with it going through. Could name a few blogs where I've had trouble with that, but Dean's World isn't one of them.

4.6.2005 5:53am

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Mark Noonan (mail) (www):

Dean,

I usually only follow track backs when they're on articles I write which start out with "That Mark Noonan is such an idiot"...or some such; entertainment value, and all that.

But, I agree, the spambots are annoying as all getout, and the pronographic ones are downright disgusting.

4.6.2005 6:32am

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Mason (mail):

No. Trackbacks are a plague. Drives me batty when folks have trackbacks mixed in with comments.

4.6.2005 6:37am

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Mike "Veeshir" Fisher (mail):

I almost never follow trackbacks. The only time I do is when I happen to notice a blog I haven't visited in a while and/or forgot about.

4.6.2005 6:59am

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Andrew Ian Dodge (mail) (www):

I tend to follow trackbacks to see who is linking to me. Trackback spam is a major pain in the arse however.

4.6.2005 7:21am

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KathyK (mail) (www):

I'm with Simon. I'm as likely to follow a trackback as read a comment.

4.6.2005 7:38am

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ben (www):

Same as KathyK here.

4.6.2005 8:36am

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Rita (www):

Same as KathyK &Andrew.

I run a little script that closes my trackbacks (and comments) after a week or so. That's taken care of most of my trackback spam. I figure if a post has been up for that long &no one's linked to it, they're probably not going to after it rolls off my front page.

But then I don't get the traffic you do, so that might be more of a problem for you.

4.6.2005 8:49am

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Scott Kirwin (mail) (www):

Dean
Do whatever you can do to keep your administration down to a minimum and focus on your writing. I'd much rather see an extra article than comments moderating or trackbacks.

4.6.2005 9:40am

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Jimmie (www):

I certainly do, and my own blog traffic pretty much lives on the trackbacks I do. Blogrolls being what they are, my blog pretty much gets lost on the larger ones (and most large ones don't even have me at all!), so I use trackbacks an awful lot.

As a blog reader, I'm more prone to check trackbacks, especially inline trackbacks to see what else is being said on a particular post before I decide whether to post or not. If the good stuff is already said, or if someone's already covering the story angle I'd considered, I'll do a couple links and that's pretty much it.

4.6.2005 9:44am

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Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

Chris Reid:

I can never trackback to Dean's site either, even though I've written several entries that reference this site.

4.6.2005 10:21am

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Rosemary Esmay (www):

I used to have to manually ping Dean, now it works.

I'm with Kathy and Simon, I'm as likely to follow a trackback as read a comment. I do both regularly.

4.6.2005 10:39am

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O. F. Jay (www):

Chris Reed, MD, and now myself... It seems the common denominator to our trackback problems is that the three of us are using Wordpress and maybe something about our pings is not liked by Powerblogs.

4.6.2005 11:15am

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Jay Solo (mail) (www):

I do sometimes. I enjoy having trackbacks available.

I had wondered if there were any spam problems with Powerblogs.

Ironically, the WP blog I run gets probably 50 comments spams a day and a trackback spam every three days. You'd think it'd attract more of the trackbacks, since those aren't moderated the way comments that contain URLs are.

4.6.2005 11:26am

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Dave Schuler (mail) (www):

I follow every trackback to posts on my site. For me its a useful way to discover who's reading my blog, why they read my blog, and what they have to say.

You situation is completely different and if you find the admin of trackbacks onerous, Dean, you should eliminate them.

4.6.2005 11:29am

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Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

OFJ:

I can ping other Powerbloggers.

4.6.2005 11:48am

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Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

I might be mistaken in that last comment now that I think of it. But I thought I had done so. In the 20 seconds since my last comment, I realize I'm not so sure.

4.6.2005 11:49am

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Don Singleton (mail) (www):

I certainly follow trackbacks, to find additional blogs that address a particular subject. I particularly like them when I am blogging an item on my blog, so that I can quote what other bloggers have thought about the same topic. If I quote a blog and if it offers a TrackBack, I also attempt to do a trackback to my blog's entry so the quoted blogger can see if I have quoted him correctly.

I hope that you will continue trackbacks.

4.6.2005 12:20pm

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Chris Reid (www):

Dean, to answer your question: nothing happens when I try trackback this site. It just doesn't show up in your trackbacks. This may be an old problem that's since been fixed though, as it's been a good 6 months since I've attempted it.

4.6.2005 12:35pm

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Phelps (www):

I rarely think to click on the "trackbacks" link and open a window, but if they are inline on the individual entry page like the comments are, then I will follow them if they have a good preview or it is a writer I recognize.

I will chime in with the others in that I like having all the trackbacks first (like Captains Quarters) rather than mixed in with the comments like some of the blogging engines do.

And I tend to give more weight to trackbacks, because the person is putting it up on thier own dime and throwing thier reputation 100% behind it.

4.6.2005 12:47pm

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Phelps (www):

And I just recently added a script to my site to close trackbacks on posts more than a week old, and I haven't seen any spam get through since, just like when I closed comments after a week.

4.6.2005 12:48pm

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Robert West (mail) (www):

I follow trackbacks occasionally, if it's a subject which interests me, but not as a standard day-to-day thing.

4.6.2005 1:21pm

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Russell Newquist (www):

I allow trackbacks, and want to continue to allow them. I think they play a big part in turning the blogosphere into a true community instead of just a bunch of pontificators on soapboxes.

Unfortunately, like you I, too, have seen a huge uptick in trackback spam lately. I'm not at 100+ a day yet, but then I don't get nearly the traffic that Dean's World does.

Spam is out of control accross the board - e-mail, referal spam, trackback spam, even IM spam - and it's causing a lot of applications to be less useful than they once were. Wish I knew what to do about it - I could make myself a fortune.

4.6.2005 1:39pm

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Martin (a.k.a. UML Guy) (www):

Here's my sole data point. I never check your trackbacks, Dean, just your comments. Same for every blog except our own. If you dump them, I'll never miss them.

4.6.2005 1:43pm

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Inv A. DeSoda (mail) (www):

I never click on trackbacks, but I will go along with what Phelps said about inline trackbacks. However, inline trackbacks would in fact detract from the comments, I think.

4.6.2005 1:51pm

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Sandi (www):

If the subject is interesting I check trackbacks to see other opinions. On my own blog I like to see who is linking to me and why.

There has never been a problem for me pinging Dean, but we are both using PowerBlogs.

I do have one beef with PowerBlogs trackback, and that is no control over the preview. A few weeks back I did a link roundup, one of which was to the Marine Corps Moms blog, which has a very sad story from a wounded son.

The auto preview excerpt was from the first link in my roundup and totally inappropriate for the preview at MCM. It caused me embarassment and I made an appolgy.

4.6.2005 2:13pm

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Inv A. DeSoda (mail) (www):

I wonder if Technorati has made trackbacks obsolete. You could even put a Technorati link for each post, then you could still keep up with who has linked to you on that post/

4.6.2005 2:25pm

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Rusty Shackleford (mail):

I always follow trackbacks people send me, but only occasionally when checking a post at another site. I do follow them when I am doing research on a post I intend to comment on at my own blog.

4.6.2005 3:45pm

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Richard Bennett (www):

You should dump Powerblogs and move to WordPress. It has a spam killer that really works, on both comments and trackbacks. And it's free.

4.6.2005 3:46pm

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Sandi (www):

"You should dump Powerblogs and move to WordPress. It has a spam killer that really works, on both comments and trackbacks. And it's free.
"

It also costs twice as much. At least on the bandwith I am using.

4.6.2005 4:41pm

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MartiniPundit (mail) (www):

I follow the legit ones becuase I'm interested in who's linking to me. Alas, the spam outnumbered the legit ones by about 200 to 1, and so I've disabled trackbacks until I have the time to upgrade my blogging SW (Expression Engine).

4.6.2005 5:19pm

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Richard Bennett (www):

You get what you pay for, Sandi my dear.

4.6.2005 5:37pm

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antimedia (mail) (www):

Let's see - I linked to a Captain Ed post about the Canadian corruption scandal, which created a trackback to him, and my site traffic went from ~180/day to 450 the next day, to 1600 yesterday and today's traffic is well over 700 already. Yeah, I'd say trackbacks get followed.

Have you discussed the problem with Chris? Maybe there's a way he can automatically filter out the obvious ones. (I haven't gotten any. I guess the spammers don't love me.)

4.6.2005 10:27pm

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Dean Esmay:

I've looked at WordPress. I switched to Powerblogs for a reason.

Trackback spamming hasn't been a problem until now. At my request, Chris has now added a trackback filtering system. I'm just deciding whether I want to bother or not.

4.6.2005 11:40pm

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Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):

No, Michael, you're right--I get your pings.

4.7.2005 1:45am

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Mark Jaquith (www):

I follow Trackbacks on other sites. If I like the subject matter, I'm interested in seeing what others have to say in response to the entry I just read.

I get anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred spams a day on my site, but Spam Karma 2 for WordPress catches more than 99% of them. The spam can be blocked... it's not a losing battle for bloggers.

4.7.2005 8:25am