Ethical Trackbacking - haydur.dot.com @ haydur.com

Ethical Trackbacking

I've just been flamed for pinging entries in other blogs and not mentioning them in my entry (here's one of the entries that I trackbacked to). Some rude people have called me a kid looking for referrers. I can just show them the finger and ping the hundreds of the thousands of other bloggers talking about the same subject. But I'd like to tell other ordinary part-time bloggers like myself what Trackbacking really means.

According to the Movabletype Trackback explanation page, "trackbacking is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in."" On further research I discovered Luigi C. De Rossi's very simple explanation of what trackbacking is. And it reads, "Trackback is a reverse link. Someone external to us sees one of our articles and says "well, this should have a link to my article over here". So he proceeds to add that link by the mechanism of trackback."

Joi Ito writes in his blog, "Obviously it makes sense to try to direct people to more information about a topic and sending a trackback to an entry about the same topic makes sense."

Where is it written that when you trackback to an entry, you should definitely mention that blogger and how magnificient their blog as well their literary sense is. That's just absurd. If my blog ever gets pinged, I would never remove it as long as the pinging entry shares the same topic. I mean does it even matter? Does it take anymore than a few extra bytes of bandwidth? The reaction I got for trackbacking and not mentioning that blog is a classic example a small number of people trying to prove that they are the gods of their realms and they make the rules. But what can I say, they are Mac users.

Anyway, if u didn't find my entry "interesting" enough... then screw u :p I'll just keep on doing what I've been doing recently... create an entry, go to daypop, search on the same topic, and trackback to the resulting entries. Simple. To me personally, trackbacking is an effective way of interconnecting the greater blogging community, if there exists one.

Note: This entry is trackbacking to numerous entries on other blogs that it fails to mention. All of those bloggers can sue me for doing that if they please.

Posted in Tech Stuff on August 15, 2003 10:29 PM

Comments

I just don't get it *bummer* btw..i read ur july 19th entry, now thats something...good work..u should try writing fiction or romance or something..

Posted by: zonaira at August 16, 2003 1:23 AM

You shouldn't be spanked for your trackbacking, you should be spanked because you're using microscopic white text on a black background.

I have decent eye sight, but -- no matter how cool your writing is -- you couldn't pay me to subject myself to the headache-inducing process of reading your blog the way it's designed currently.

I look forward to you enlarging your default text size, and I will plan on dropping by again in a few weeks :)

Posted by: Adam Lasnik at August 16, 2003 3:44 AM

^ Just increased the size... actually I'm working on a universally usable text size changing script. Hopefully it should be up by ur next visit :)

Posted by: Haydur at August 16, 2003 8:40 AM

The white and black is fine combination..

Posted by: Tora at August 16, 2003 9:14 AM

Interesting random Mac-bash. Actually, I'm more of a unix user, with OS X happening to be my preferred unix. And of the seven comps I have and use regularly, only two of them are Macs, the rest including PCS runnign FreeBSD or Win XP Pro, and a homebuilt Linux server. But, you know, whatever.

That said, I'll grant that you have a, legitimate, interpretation of the trackback system. It is not one I agree with, to be sure... but I'll take back that you were just trolling for referers, which may not have been the case.

(Long story short, I don't apologize for my viewpoint, but I apologize for the rudeness.)

Posted by: John Kenneth Fisher at August 16, 2003 12:28 PM

I found your entry because I was trying to learn more about Trackback, what it means, and why/when/how I should use it (or not).

Thank you for an informative article. It made sense and, based on what you said, I certainly agree that folk are going overboard reacting to you the way they did.

I actually don't KNOW if I'm using Trackback, because I'm too new to MT still. But I sometimes find a link somewhere to tie into my text and, if it comes from a blog, I don't necessarily mention the blog. (Why would I? Just because the post I'm mentioning ties into my topic doesn't mean the blog as a whole does. When I write, I want to go for a nice flow of argument, not a tour of the Internet.)

I said I don't know if I'm using Trackback, by the way. That's because if, say, I was writing about some political issue I might find a related post somewhere and I bring it up on screen, copy the URL, then click the "URL" button in my MT screen and that's how I add the link. I don't know if that's what it means to "Trackback." (I read the manual, but have to admit I skimmed that section since I wasn't "ready" for it.)

Anyway, sorry to babble in this. Mainly I just wanted to say thanks for your take on what Trackbacks are for. It sounds right to me from the limited reading I have done.

Posted by: Rick Horowitz at August 20, 2003 2:22 PM

While some people clearly overreact on the subject of trackbacks, the fact is that a large number of us feel it's rude to send someone a trackback ping without including a link on your site. It comes off as an effort to siphon off traffic from another site without bothering to share your own traffic.

There is no need to get angry about this either way. But I would appreciate it if you would do me the courtesy if actually linking to my site if you're going to send a trackback to my site. I think I've been quite polite in making such a request, and I hope you'll consider it.

Posted by: Dean Esmay at December 1, 2003 12:39 AM

Niccceee pagee

Posted by: Meban at February 20, 2004 8:14 AM

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