I got an email from the hosting company this morning alerting me to the amount of trackback spam and they have disabled the trackback script. I’m content to leave it off. Trackbacks are nice, but they are not worth the effort to keep afloat.
It is a considerable pity that this nice technology has been ruined by spammers, but such is life.
One of the good things about WordPress is that you are notified when someone else links to you. This enables you to achieve the same effect as trackback as you can then link from your post to their post.
It is a pity that it’s been flooded by spam – being able to read different takes from both bloggers and commenters on an issue is a very interesting aspect of the sphere.
Please consider re-enabling HTML in comments. It won’t add to the spam problem, but it will greatly increase the value added to the blog by commenters.
P.S. I’ve found that using one of those “key in the numbers you see” comment filters has reduced spam to almost zero, without affecting the quality of comments.
You should see the number of attempts we’re getting thats directed at our old MT archives – and they haven’t existed for like four months. The spambots just get the good old fashioned 404 error, but it hasn’t stopped them from trying.
Ditto here. Part of me thinks it would be a fun idea change the trackback script to something that puts the offender on a blacklist, though I can see that getting nasty…
Scott, I would have emailed you, but can’t find your email address. Can you explain what trackback is. I presume I will still be able to find old threads by searching the Troppo search facility?
I want to voice my agreement with EP on returning HTML to comments: this has always been one of the best features of blogs.
PS…Switch to WordPress!