“Trackback” is one of the most interesting features of Movable Type, and not terribly difficult to understand: I post an article on my blog, and you comment on it at your blog. You send me a “Trackback”, which appends a little note to my article pointing to yours. Everybody who’s inspired by my article is therefore reachable from my article’s Trackbacks. Not too complicated, and very nice and tidy.
Trackbacks drive some people crazy, however, either because they can’t understand this simple notion, or because they’ve got a stake in some sort of blog software that can’t support them, and as a result we get irrational criticisms like this one at Daring Fireball that’s endorsed by Dave Winer:
First and foremost is that TrackBack a two-way protocol. Both sides of the transaction, pinger and pingee, need to speak TrackBack for a ping to work. This is not so much of a problem if both web sites are running, say, Movable Type. But if the site you’re linking to doesn’t support TrackBack, you can’t send it a TrackBack ping. Nor are you going to get TrackBacks from sites that link to you, when those sites don’t support TrackBack.
Yes, John, two-way protocols don’t work without two-way cooperation, but guess what, all protocols are at least two way, and that’s what makes them protocols. If you just want to talk to yourself, you don’t need no stinking protocol.
And the fact that Trackback is currently not supported by blogware that never has been able to handle an archive competently – that means Blogger – is not a serious barrier. Everybody leaves Blogger for something more serious as soon as they don’t need the training wheels. We call that “progress”, and it’s a Good Thing.
Phillip Winn’s blog goes into more detail on why the TrackBack attack is silly.
Thanks for the link/ping. I’m a long-time reader (you’re on my blogroll), so it was especially gratifying.
My pleasure, Phillip – you wrote a patient and excellent critique.
Movable Type isn’t the only blog software to support trackbacks, either. The Open Source Blosxom also supports them.
I’m not sure about P-Machine or that other one–Brain-something or other? Can’t remember.
The real problem here is that Blogger is falling behind the rest of the industry. Given that the Google people are about the only ones in the IT industry who seem to have little trouble making a profit these days, you have to wonder why.
By the way, I’ve converted over 30 blogs at this point. I’ll be publishing a full list soon, probably this weekend.
Nucleus and b2 (the best of the php/mySQL-driven blog tools, though pMachine is close) both support trackback, although a plugin is necessary for Nucleus. Some users have implemented SixApart’s standalone trackback for pMachine. So for capable tools — especially tools that are open to modification by their user community — it’s really not a problem.
And that’s the real complaint, isn’t it? The various whiners (pardon the bad pun) seem upset that blogger and radio (and also CityDesk, which isn’t mentioned) are left out of the party. Well, they’re left out by choice, because there are plenty of alternatives. Or are the whiners decrying an alternative web that they aren’t driving?