NZ Bear Blocking Open Trackbacks

James Joyner at Outside The Beltway has a solid post up on the issue, which NZ Bear announces here. I confess to not having paid much attention to what's been going on, though I've been seeing much more of this and also the daily trolling of every post by some bloggers in emails.

Hey, I troll posts - especially to the Big Guy, which is probably foolish - but he's actually linked a few. But I do it for something I at least think is special - and do it far from routinely. And I do encourage bloggers to send me things I might not see - but I'd really prefer it be to something they especially liked and not every post they do.

I see I have friends on both sides of the Open TB issue, so let me just state my feelings without diving too deep into that particular pond. NZ provides a valuable service to the Blogosphere and I have seen damn few posts thanking him for his incredible efforts over the years. I don't much like seeing posts bashing him for a decision that is his and his alone. Anyone ever stop to think that the ecosystem is actually his blog? I don't know about anyone else, but I don't pay to read it, or be ranked by it - anbd until I do, I guess I'll just accept the valuable service he provides - as he chooses to provide it.

Well, except for one point from NZ Bear

It seems to me that the main motivation of such posts is simply to provide a quick and easy way for bloggers to generate links to each other, without any real regard for the substance of each other's posts. The links, rather than symbolizing and codifying the relationship between two posts, or two blogs, have become an end in themselves.

The same thing has been going on with blog roll membership forever, so with all due respect for a wonderful system, the link rankings can't be relied upon for very much at all. In my opinion, traffic is and should be the only measure of a blog - and I realize there are problems with that, too. Tech types like to track links - ad companies prefer traffic - follow the money, it's usually right. Just my 2 cents.

Guess it's an imperfect world, after all.

Comments

[Crazy Politico]

I don't have a problem with him not counting them. I do participate in open trackbacks, not daily but regularly, usually when I think I've got a good piece up on my blog I'd like more to read.

I can see NZ's point though, because many of them (even the one I posted on today) really are just to get hits in the ecosystem.

It'll be interesting to see how the numbers change when he's got this implemented.

[Steel]

You are right of course.

But I may become a rodent or fish again and I just got used to being warm-blooded AND upright.

[Mister Snitch!]

"It seems to me that the main motivation of such posts is simply to provide a quick and easy way for bloggers to generate links to each other, without any real regard for the substance of each other's posts. The links, rather than symbolizing and codifying the relationship between two posts, or two blogs, have become an end in themselves."

And the Carnivals differ in what way?