In my continuing rant on TypePad’s horrifically poor system for managing comment and trackback spam, I wanted to post the following complaint:

Why is it that we are unable to ban trackbacks based on a specific IP address the same way we can with comments? Why is it that when viewing trackbacks through the TypePad Control Panel, we cannot even see the IP address of the offending spammer? I know TypePad has this information because every time it sends me an email letting me know about a new trackback that has been submitted, it includes the IP address that the TrackBack was sent from.

So what gives? Here I am manually deleting tons of spam from the same bunch of jerks, all because TypePad hasn’t implemented a simple ban trackbacks based on IP option?

(And all of you spammers - don’t bother. All you’re doing is aggravating the crap out of me, but your comment and trackback spam will never see the light of day on my blog. Everything is moderated - do you see any spam on here? No. SO LEAVE ME ALONE!!!)

So far I’ve only had the opportunity to test how WordPress 2.0.1 handles sending of automatic trackbacks (in the Options|Discussion tab, we’re presented with a checkbox that
says, “Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article (slows
down posting.)”

What that means is that for any article linked to in a particular
post, wordpress should automatically be sending a ping to alert that
article that you’ve written about them, saving you the time of having
to manually paste their trackback URI into the Trackbacks section of
the Write Post screen.

On what was initially my WP 2.0 Test blog (and which is now my WP 2.0.1 Test Blog), I had reported that in WordPress 2.0, the only blogs that seemed to receive these automatic trackback pings were other WordPress 2.0 blogs.

I had hoped that these problems would be resolved in
WordPress 2.0.1, but instead they seem to have worsened, with even more
erratic results than before:

• again, no trackback pings to WordPress 1.5.x blogs or TypePad blogs got sent
• again, the only time WP properly sent a single ping to a referenced post was when it was pinging the same version of wordpress, this time from v2.0.1 to v2.0.1
• duplicate pings were sent to WordPress 2.0 blogs that were referenced in a wordpress 2.0.1 post, AND
• duplicate pings were also sent to wordpress.com blogs that were referenced in a wordpress 2.0.1 post - making you look like a spammer

What a bummer.

That’s it – I’ve had it! Even though SixApart introduced comment and trackback moderation for TypePad, it still does not diminish the termendous amount of work I stilll need to do sorting through legitmate trackbacks amongst the hoards of trackback spam. Effective immediately, I am now turning off trackback functionality on all of my TypePad blogs and you can thank the spammers for it.

This brings TypePad’s usefulness as a blogging platform down for me, as I consider TrackBacks to be an critical feature of blogging and connecting the strands of the blogosphere.

As I’ve mentioned before, handling trackback and comment spam is where WordPress really blows the competition away. WordPress is smarter than TypePad in recognizing spam and filtering it into a seperate queue for moderation, where I can scan through the hoard and do a ‘mark all as spam’ and get back to what I was doing. It’s almost effortless.

Six Apart – where are your spam filtering tools? You guys can do better than this. Until TypePad can recognize that trackbacks that talk about donkey sex, incest, child porn, and rape are pretty darn likely to be SPAM and put it in a seperate area labeling it as such, I must turn off my TrackBacks on TypePad. And that’s a shame for both me and the blogging community. Oh and while I’m griping, I’ll now add that I just realized that TypePad’s Configure tab only gives me the option of turning off trackbacks for new posts. I now ALSO have to manually go through each and every post I ever created and edit the post, and then uncheck the checkbox that says ‘Accept TrackBacks’. There is no tool for mass editing acceptance of TrackBacks on older posts. Shoot me now.

For those who are still wondering, I’m still torn between whether I prefer TypePad over WordPress, and when time permits intend to write a comprehensive comparison of the two (each has it’s own pros and cons, and is better or less suited for certain tasks/people), although WP is leaping ahead now that the TrackBack spam has become such an enormous problem in TypePad, despite the addition of new comment and trackback management tools…

From TypePad’s Help, when you are creating a new post if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will see a small link underneath the Preview and Save buttons entitled, ‘Customize the display of this page‘.

Go ahead and click it. You’re now given a choice of basic, advanced, or custom. Go ahead and choose advanced, and you will now see the following extras when you create your posts:

displays the Title, Category, Post Introduction, Post Continuation, Comments, Accept TrackBacks, Posting Status, Excerpt, TrackBack URLs to Ping, Text Formatting

From TypePad’s help (which, by the way, was not helpful in defining what a TrackBack is until you delve further into how to send a TrackBack)

Sending a TrackBack When you send a TrackBack ping, a link to your post and an excerpt of the post is displayed in the TrackBack section of the receiving site. This directs readers to visit your site to read more.

There are a few different ways to send a TrackBack ping:

Sending a TrackBack ping using QuickPost
First, configure the QuickPost bookmarklet by Setting Up TypePad QuickPost if you haven’t yet already. Select the TrackBack items for display on your QuickPost entry form.

Then, follow the steps for Using the QuickPost Bookmarklet to create a new post using QuickPost.

When composing your post, at the bottom of the QuickPost entry form, you will have a pull-down menu to “Select an entry to send a TrackBack ping to”. Use this menu to choose the post you would like to ping.

The TrackBack ping will send when you save the post.

TrackBack Auto-Discovery
With auto-discovery, TypePad will look for any links in your weblog post and determine if those links are TrackBack-enabled. If they are, TypePad will automatically send TrackBack pings to those sites.

TrackBack auto-discovery will be added to TypePad in a future update.

Sending a TrackBack from the Post Page
First, set the “TrackBack URLs to Ping” box to display on your post page by Customizing the Post Page Display.

Now, find the TrackBack URL on the page you would like to ping. Note: The TrackBack Ping URL is not the permalink for an entry, it is the special TrackBack URL for the entry.

Paste the TrackBack URL into the “Send a TrackBack to these addresses” field on your post page. You can paste more than one URL, separated by carriage returns.

The TrackBack ping will send when you save the post.

I’m guessing that instead of using the trackback link to LINK to a post, you use the post’s PERMALINK to link to it, and then in your own post you can choose to Send a TrackBack to these addresses, wherein you paste the trackback addresses. In order to even see this option, you must be using the advanced options in TypePad’s Compose a New Post.