I’ve noticed a lack of comments about a lot of things lately, but I just found this item from Wishful Thinking:
Why would you use a trackback instead of a comment? One big advantage is that readers of your blog can also see the post. And sometimes trackbacks are a good idea when you have a lot to say and don’t want to take up a lot of space on someone else’s comments section. If you want to see trackbacks in action, have a look at at this typical post from Seth Godin’s blog – Seth only allows trackbacks instead of comments because he says he prefers the greater accountability that comes from people airing their views on their own webspace.
I should think that limiting readers to trackbacks would lower the amount of feedback considerably. Of course, there are times and topics where that would be nice, but so much more effort is also involved in a trackback over a comment. What say you?
Hi Gitr, good point re lower levels of feedback. I’m not sure if I was very clear about the difference between the blogger and the commenter/trackbacker –
When I asked “Why would you use a trackback instead of a comment?” I meant “you” to signify the commenter/trackbacker. So it’s asking about the benefit to you from the point of view of leaving feedback on a blog.
For the blogger, there’s not such a clear benefit in restricting feedback to trackbacks only – unless you count lower levels of feedback as a benefit! Maybe if you’re so popular you’re overwhelmed by comments, but I don’t have that problem yet ๐
Maybe I’ll rewrite that paragraph to make it clearer.