intertwingly

I sold at least one seat so far for OSCOM. Maybe we should raise the price? ";->"...

Perhaps an RSS file of the changes to an OPML directory is all we need?

Sam Ruby signed up for OSCOM. This conference gets more exciting every day. I signed up yesterday....

Sam we kind of have trackback for directories, but via email and editorial judgment. Check out this directory. It's just a start, but I'm going to try to keep it maintained if people suggest links.

Actually, "trackback" is the name of a specific technology,  (I know you know this, because you've tried to implement it.)  Implicit in Sam's point was that many tools support trackback auto-discovery, thus cutting out an important step in the directory-building process.  People do what they do naturally (blog and link), and the directory-building happens by itself.

Hi Mark, nice in theory, but it won't work in practice. I spend some amount of time every day fighting spam in referer logs. You'd be amazed at the messages I get that way. They're not all very polite. Without an editorial filter it would be a cesspool within minutes. Maybe you don't have to fight this yet, but I do. Different perspective. Also, I'm encouraging people to clone the directory browser functionality, so I'm not the only one who can do it. Already Simon Fell has some of the functionality implemented and is in a position to experiment.

Dave: coincidentally, we're having this discussion on another thread on Sam's blog at this very moment, where I'm agreeing with you 100%.

I've long since given up on my referer logs.  I have 800 unique referering domains a day; I've filtered out the main abusers (news aggregators, prominent spammers) but they're still basically useless.

However, Trackback has not (yet) had a spamming problem.  Obviously the threat is there (it's just an unauthenticated HTTP POST), but I don't know of a single case of Trackback spam.  If it's happened, it's quite rare, and generally targetted rather than blind.

Don't see how other OPML-based implementations make a difference.  Nice that anyone can implement it, but doesn't address this problem.

Mark, I would have a spamming problem the instant it went up. I've got the wiener boys following me around. You know who they are, if I point to them they'll start whining. ;->

I ran with Sam's idea and put up a modified version of the OPML directory browser that supports trackback. Send a trackback with just a title to add a new folder node, send a trackback with a title and link to add a link. If the link ends in .opml,...

Dave - you have comments open on your Harvard weblog.  How is your OPML directory any different?

What's nice about trackback is that it is difficult to be anonymous.

Simon: way cool!

Dave, just like you have done on manila discussion groups, enable
identity management for trackbacks. I'll volunteer some time and
resources and time in setting this up. It dosent have to be complex,
but both trackback and comments could either have to go through a
redirecting comment/trackback server which would check for the
existence of an identity cookie, or there would need to be an image bug
in the commenta page which would need the identity cookie.

Sam, that's a good point. Maybe the WB's are leaving me alone, or being selective about where they do it. I wasted a couple of hours the other day cleaning up after one of them. Rahul, I don't understand, what good does the cookie do? When people are having a bad day they don't care if we know who they are.

Dave, that would not be spam, but a user being abusive, and such a system ought to have a way of banning the user.

So one could think of it as two level protection..first a user would need to sign up at a registration page (and one could suitably protect against a script with numbers to copy from a gif/reply to an email situation)..which would weed out script spammers.

Second an abusive commenter could be banned from a blog for ever or a cool off time, like its done with IRC.

Rahul, the only way to keep out the determined is to shut out everyone.  All it takes is creating a hotmail account and you can register anywhere.

The real problem I have with registration schemes is that one has to register with each web site that you might want to comment on.

Simple question: how many weblogs do you comment on that have registration?  I thought so.

One solution is a centralized registration facility.  Single signon.  Think Microsoft Passport.  Want to go there?

What's needed is something that you can do once and forget.  Once done, you are known everywhere.

Then, once you can be reliably identified, you can be banned.

Sam,

I entirely agree that registration needs to be somewhat centralized, atleast. I dont even comment (unless I am using Safari as it autofills from my address book) on many sites asking me for my email/web, just like yours...

I realize that passport is at the other end of the spectrum, but something centralized, with a good privacy policy I would go for. As an example, I am more likely to buy shareware/services which allow me to use paypal, as my paypal username/password proxy for a whole lot of credit card information. Now, given that paypal is for financial info, i wouldnt want to use that identity here, but I would use an identity I create for blog commenting purposes.

Other benefits can come from such a scheme, associated with authorization on group blogs..RSS based subscription leading to a Poor Man's groove, etc. You could categorize your comments/trackbacks by this identity (since its more likely to be unique than what i put in each time)..track conversations across blogs using trackbacks..ie a conversation view, etc using such a service. Mix the identity with IM for preferred folks and you could get 1-1 straight off..

You are entirely right when you say someone could just create a hotmail throwaway email. Still, you've raised the threshhold for a spammer, made it that much harder, made sure the spammer is a person who had to register. You increased the potential energy to be disruptive so I would hope it would cut the
attempts to disrupt and spam down by quite a bit..