[pmwiki-users] Trackbacks

[Robin Hills]

Russell Bailey wrote:

> Someone may need to correct me, but I believe the blogger still 
> generally copies the trackback url and pastes it into a form provided 
> by their software.  Alternatively,  you can use a little bookmarklet 
> to autodiscover the trackback url from a page's header.

It depends on the software you're using. I use Movable Type (MT) and if 
I link to another blog that uses MT then the process is automatic. MT 
scans for the links and sends the pings without my intervention. But if 
I link to a Blogspot blog that uses Haloscan (a popular third party 
comment/trackback system), I have to go to that blog, copy the trackback 
URL for the specific post and then paste it into a field MT supplies for 
the purpose.

>
> So:
>
> * When composing a post,  the user provides,  manually or by 
> bookmarklet,  a trackback url.
> * When the post is made available for public consumption,  the 
> wiki/blog sends a request to the trackback url.
>
> There is a standalone trackback implementation written in Perl,  which 
> is pretty minimal and pretty functional.
>
>> Also, does this mean that each page/article needs to be keeping
>> track of any trackback pings it has received?  If so, then what's
>> the standard mechanism for dealing with spammers who might
>> use trackback pings to create lots of links to other sites...?
>>  
>>
> Trackback spam is a problem,  just like conventional comment or wiki 
> spam.  You kill it in pretty much the same ways-  with link blacklists.
>
Yes, each entry has a list of the trackbacks to it.

Blacklists are one solution to spammers. I also rename my trackback 
script periodically and then rebuild the whole blog so that the new 
script name is incorporated into the trackback links. It seems to slow 
the spammers down for a couple of weeks at least. Trackback spam wasn't 
that common when I started blogging two years ago. It was comment spam. 
Then about a year ago, I started seeing more of the former than of the 
latter.

Rob (pogge)