Trackback Ethics
I'm pretty slow. I read the blogs, see what's going around, let it simmer in my head for a while, and then comment. The other week Scoble and gang were talking about how to promote your blog, which prompted some outrage. "Interesting," I thought. "I have some ideas about this myself." So today when I trackbacked the sites the related to Scoble's original post and the discussion thereof, I received criticism, some polite, some not. You can call me "Elliott, Nefarious Spammer," now, I guess. For commenting on a set of related posts, I guess. Seems a bit over-the-top, doesn't it?
I trackbacked Jenett in a post which differed with Scoble about blog promotion, as well as the interesting business / tech blog Ensight. As you can see from the comments, they're not happy about it. Ensight professionally points out that trackback might have another purpose–I've emailed him for clarification.
Update: Ensight apologizes for his honest criticism! Not needed: I thought he had a civil point to make.
Jenett on the other hand deletes the trackback and bans my ip. Why don't I add "deny 68.60.102.8" to my .htaaccess? Well–I don't mind the flow of ideas, even if they're onesided.
But this isn't about squabbling between bloggers. I'm more interested in the question, "What is trackback for?" or "What is ethical Trackback?" I'm not sure. From what I've read, Trackback is just a ping to tell someone that you've written / blogged / quoted something similar or on the same topic (Wikipedia). I was continuing Scoble's discussion of blog promotion. I tracked back discussions of it. Was that wrong?
There might be a point to be made on indirection versus direction. If you quote a blog, trackback is 100% appropriate. But what if you're commenting on the same topic? Isn't it ok to point a reference to your own thoughts? In that case, your post becomes a large remote comment. Multiple interleaved trackbacks between sites allow a reader to follow all the different perspectives on the web. So, in that regard, Trackingback a good post that you'd like to comment on with your own post seems like a good idea. Why do some people cry "spam"? It's just commentary.
Update: How to blog has coverage of the ongoing discussion here and here. He adds an ethical consideration about trackback too interesting to avoid quoting:
From a pure ethics point of view, TRACKBACK is used to notify someone that you are discussing their post on your blog. So you want to make sure that you are expanding on another persons comments whether you are debating, building on or just notifying your readers of some newsworthy from another blog.
| This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 12th, 2004 at 6:32 pm and is tagged with how to promote your blog, honest criticism, indirection, scoble, wikipedia, nefarious, spammer, ensight, outrage, clarification, bloggers, ethics, squabbling, blogs, ip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
3 Responses to “Trackback Ethics”
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Hm, I cant agree with you in this particular case.
Does leaving a trackback give one carte blanche to report an entire post or is it more of a way to let them know they’re being partially quoted or discussed?
No, you don’t have rights to copy an entire post. But it’s useful in two broad cases: you’re adding to a theme or conversation (now usually twitter RTs) or you are quoting (now usually pingbacks).