Last week, in a post about Trackback I said that I wanted to challenge a number of items in the original post on the topic over at plasticbag. The I decided not to write anymore about it because blogging about blogging can get incestuous and dull.
Then, today I read Erik’s piece – and the associated comments – about how he did not believe Trackbacks were difficult to understand. So I reconsidered some of what I was going to write and concluded that there were valid things in my mind originally that I wanted to say.
Today, then, I want to disagree with the following two – more-or-less- related assertions that:
Enabling Trackback just to get a link from a more popular site is not what is was designed for
Well yes, that’s partly true but it’s inevitable. The more popular sites are more likely to be the ones to spark conversations (or bring a conversation to the attention of more people). Therefore people will link to them. Seamless linking is exactly the point of Trackback and it let’s you know who is interested in the conversation. Following on,,
Using Trackback without contributing to the conversation is wrong
The assertion follows that if you Trackback without contributing then this is wrong (or somehow not fair). Plasticbag itself seems to be a site that proves this is not happening. Look at the Trackbacks – a range of varied authors and sites some with more to say than others. None of them seem to be swamping Plasticbag and making it unreadable and many of them are good contributions to the discussion.
It’s unrealistic to believe everybody will have something new to say but it doesn’t mean they are any less valuable in the debate. Somebody who simply points to a debate (via a link list or some such device) is opening that conversation to an audience (and the link that makes Trackback work means a blog is pointing to a conversation). A higher number of links suggests a conversation has stirred interest and imagination. Hey it functions as a Google-style page rank system. If Trackback were implemented everywhere you’d easily be able to see the most popular conversations around – even if not everybody had something new to say. This is good – it doesn’t need a Google to allow me to find other, related, writings because I do it from where I started.
I’d rather you accepted Trackbacks if you Trackback to my site because it helps the conversation grow. But if you don’t, so what? It doesn’t mean your part in the discussion is invalid and suggesting that it has to be a two-way street seems, somehow, against the spirit
And I still have to get round to editing the trackback system on my site. I admit I am more mouth than action on this topic at the moment, but when time allows I’ll sort it out.