Pingback in #CCK11
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011Jaap has referred to pingback in his latest post (which also touches on many other interesting points), and I would like to see further discussion of the extent to which pingback (and trackback) meet the needs for support of a distributed networked conversation.
While it seems to me that the basic structure provided by pingback/trackback tools is exactly what Stephen is calling for, there are problems with take-up and implementation which are preventing them from really doing the job.
With regard to take-up, not everyone implements them and so we can’t just take it for granted that a blog post in response to another will actually show up as part of the conversation. And with regard to implementation, when pingback and/or trackback are used the excerpt that shows up as a comment in the original post is often not illuminating. Is there any way to ensure that all participants implement these tools and that the excerpts are sufficient to allow the reader to decide whether or not to click through for more detail?