Trackbacks, Comment Spam, and Whatnot
You might have noticed the absence of trackback links on this blog during the last week or so. I shut off the feature to try an experiment. Sadly, it failed. Someone suggested I try disabling trackback as a way to combat comment spam. Apparently, the way some servers talk to each other, comment spam comes in via the trackback ping door. Who knew? Anyway, it didn’t work. Shortly after turning trackback off, I was still receiving about 100 comment spam a day. The comment spammers haven’t bothered me for a few days now. (Thanks, spammers! I needed the break!) I’m not sure why. I doubt it will stay that way for very long, but I have enjoyed my vacation.
Someone (was it Kim?) suggested I add the SpamPoison link to my weblog, which is that box presently on the sidebar:
It’s rumored to work on some blog spammers. Maybe it’s working in Manila, too. I can’t really say for certain, though I believe I received a round of comment spam after adding it. I imagine, though, that the link has to be present for a while in order to start working properly. The idea is that the link sends spam robots to sites that basically overwhelm them. In order to maintain their sanity, the robots blacklist sites linking to places that overwhelm them.
As I suspected, however, turning off trackback did not stop trackback pings from coming in, so trackback spam continued to pile up. I imagine the problem is similar to how even though we can turn comments off on Manila weblogs, we can’t actually prevent comments from coming in. Here’s an example from which I removed work-unsafe spam. (Of course, by the time you read it, who knows what will be there …)
Adam’s comment about trackback on my post about copyright and feeds got me thinking a little bit, too.
“I’m sorta amazed people use trackbacks… Why offer the ability to link - to link in gobbed, italicized anchor text - from pretty much anyone? Sure you can always edit them in the backend, but I’d rather just disable trackbacks on the blogs I publish.”
Well, when I first started blogging in April, 2003, trackback worked ok to indicate linked blog posts. For me, trackback spam wasn’t the problem it has become. I’m not sure that blog developers and bloggers really thought through how spammers would be using trackback today to gob up the system. It definitely wasn’t on my mind back then. I don’t even have an estimate about how much trackback spam I get per day because Manila’s management tools are not robust enough to gather trackbacks in one place. I have to look for them by going through each post. With 5000+ posts … forget it.
I’ve been thinking about comment and trackback spam way too much lately. I want better tools to deal with them in a manner that’s much more efficient. Most of the other blogs I work on don’t have the problems these Manila blogs do. I am considering switching to a different platform in order to get those tools to deal with comment and trackback spam, but that requires far more time than I have on hand for doing far more important things, like, well, living life. Anyone want to help me import more than 5000+ items into a new platform? See what I mean? = )
As always, comments and thoughts are welcome. I know most of you don’t use Manila. What tools do you use? What works for you? Does your blog software offer good features for controlling and combating spam? What do you like? What do you dislike? How would you improve things?
Meanwhile, I’ll ponder whether I want to turn trackback on again.
Addendum 1/18/07: I wrote a follow-up post saying SpamPoison doesn’t work to block spam on Manila, which isn’t surprising considering that’s not its purpose.
December 28th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
I have never understood the point of trackback.
That said, some while ago a friend noted that all the blogging software in the world had totally failed to learn from the history and failures of usenet and would be undergoing the same lossages themselves and then reinventing the same wheels.
He was so right.