Trackback Pings

I have steadfastly ignored trackback since the day I first heard of it.

In case you've missed this, trackback is an automatic cross-linking mechanism for websites, and particularly for blogs. The basic idea is this: I write an article about xyz. You notice that, and it inspires you to write a similar article at your site. You notify me by a POST request to an address I embedded in my page, carrying data also conveniently found in that same page. My server picks up on that, and adds your page to the list of trackbacks at the bottom of the page.

Nice idea. Lets people go view related material in a nicely automated system. What's not to like? Why am I such a grump?

It's a spammer's playground. You are Mr. Sleaze and have just put up a new Viagra page. Let's get some traffic, shall we? All it takes is a trackback to a popular page somewhere else. Bingo, instant credible link.

So, no trackback here, thanks. But..

I'm not always the quickest, but eventually the tired old brain comes up with a solution. The problem I have with trackback is the automation. I don't object to pointing to legitimate articles, so all I need to do is kill the automatic part and put any trackbacks into an approval queue. I check the link out; if it looks ok, I let it rip. If not, I kill it.

This will require a custom trackback implementation. I don't mind rolling such a thing from scratch, but it's always nice to have a head start, and it turns out there's quite a bit available already. There's a Net::TrackBack::Client Perl module and a technical specification of trackback is at http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/docs/trackback_spec

To make it even more interesting, there's now a competing idea called "pingback" that I've seen a few sites use.

So, something to keep me busy next time I'm feeling bored..

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