21 December, 2005

Trackback closed

As the title says, The Ministry no longer offers a trackback facility on blog posts, primarily because I've been receiving at least as much blog sp*m via trackback as via comments this year.  I'd be reluctant to 'surrender' to the advertisers and withdraw the feature for that reason alone, but there's another, almost as compelling: genuine visitors simply don't use trackback.

I've received 583 comments since Oct. 2003 (that I've kept; counting sp*m which evaded the blacklist, it's ~3460 comments). In contrast, I've received less than 50 legitimate trackbacks, and in recent months 90% of them were from one person (thanks, Tim!).

Commenting is well-used, and is easily worth the minor chore of blocking or occasionally cleaning-up sp*m; I truly value comments. However, if trackback isn't used, except by spammers, why keep it?