[wp-hackers] Trackback Spam

[Michel Valdrighi]

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 07:27:30 -0500, Scott Merrill <skippy at skippy.net> wrote:
> > Let's not do what Anil Dash does: TrackBacks don't necessarily come with a link.
> 
> The reference is lost on me.  In what ways has Anil Dash suffocated the
> trackback spec?

Sorry, I should have made it clearer.
Anil Dash's linkblog does a TrackBack to whatever he's linking to. The
problem is that these tb don't add anything to the discussion on the
item that is linked. They just serve to say "hey, I linked to you",
which would just be what PingBacks are for.

> And according to the official SixApart trackback specification, a link
> is the _only_ think specifically required:
>     http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mttrackback.html
> "In the Movable Type implementation, of the above parameters only url is
> required. If title is not provided, the value for url will be set as the
> title."

This is relevant only to what is sent in the TrackBack. Nowhere does
it say that if Alice wants to trackback Bob she has to make a link to
Bob's entry on the URL that she sends in the trackback.

So if you're proposing that WP checks the URL in the trackback to see
if the entry links to the trackbacked entry, then that's putting an
unnecessary restraint on the spec.
The only way to check for relevance is to read and comprehend the
content, which is out of reach of our possibilities.

-- 
Michel Valdrighi
Devéloppeur Web Intraordinaire
http://zengun.org/weblog/