Now of course I am sure you are aware that I posted a response to this post in my newsletter. So why the ’0′?

It is, of course, because my system did not ‘ping’ your system to let you know I had replied.

My system doesn’t ping. It’s not so much because I’m lazy and won’t write the code (though that’s part of it) but because once I get into the pinging game, I have to now write new code for each new blogging software that comes online. Even if they use a standard API, I still ahve to detect these new systems.

But more than that: why should I have to send you (and everyone else) notification that I’ve written to you. It requires you opening up your system to my input (and conversely, me mine to yours), thus creating a large opening for the roaches you have pictured on your comments board.

But I created my RSS feed so that I wouldn’t have to make submissions all over the net. Wouldn’t it make more sense to check RSS feeds for comments, and then, should my comment match your URL, post a trackback based on that?

Such a system, especially if handled through an aggregator (like Technorati or Edu_RSS) is pretty efficient. And it allows you to filter your trackbacks, so that you don’t have to list the track-back from Sex-Toyz-R-Us, even if it is a genuine link.

Just some food for thought from an undocumented trackback. ;)

– Stephen

Sure Trackback has problems, but there is not much else out there that does the task of reporting back where your work is cited. Even MT bloggers often do not send Trackback pings. And I agreed that it is fertile property for Mr Roachie. I get occaisional TB pings from Radio users, but I am not sure if it is a manual effort on their part.

I am not sure of the idea you propose. It would call for some sort of crawler to visit a “repoistory” of feeds and report back with info on items that contain matching URLs to an entire published blog? Or is the idea that blog software automically ping a site like Technorati? Not sure how one filters it either?

I am not disagreeing at all with the problem- we all want better way to draw connections between like information that is related to what we individually post. It is just that I am not steeped in the communication layers and protocola, I just try to grab and take advantage of what is out there.

So Trackback may be bad, but I will take it better than nothing. It is an area that we need more clever thought since it moves from a static web of just nodes to hope from to one where the nodes communicate back and forth.

Maybe I will go in and manually register your undocument trackback so we can bump it from (0) to (1).