Pingbacks! Yes!
Okay, so, LJ announced Pingbacks and a lot of people were like Whut? or Do Not Want!, which made zvi go :(. Why? Because pingbacks can be AWESOME, people.
Okay, so, say I write a piece of fanfiction, okay? And say, nobody comments on it, and I'm like, WHAT? It was hot. Also gay. Also hot. And I am sad. :/
But, say that other people were talking about my fanfiction and linking to it because I did, like, some crazy thing where everybody thinks that I am crazy. And they just didn't want to comment on my post because what if I went crazy at them?
Well, if they have pingbacks enabled, we can both be happy. Because they can have banned me from their journal, but pingback-bot will let me know that people were talking about my story. Yay!
Other situations where you might love to have pingbacks:
* Why look, you've been instarecced by someone who didn't comment on your original story post
* Oh help, you've been slashdotted by metafandom
* Oh my, you've been slashdotted by some BNF you have never heard of
* So, like, three years ago you wrote this meta you thought was awesome, and then you write new meta that is awesome(r) and links back to the old meta. Now everyone who starts at the old meta can see a comment linking to the new meta with little work on your part!
* Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and has misunderstood every word of your breathless prose, now you can go Tell Them How
* Hey! Someone wrote you an open letter or public apology (and they link to your post where you explained how they were Wrong On The Internet), but didn't send you an e-mail about it, because they don't actually like you that much
Okay, so, basically, pingbacks are really helpful in three ways:
(1) Finding out why all these people have suddenly come to your journal
(2) Finding out that people are riffing on what you said
(3) Connecting the dots between things you said
So, you know, people who vanity google themselves? People who can never get enough story feedback? People who like to shop around in the marketplace of ideas? These are the people for whom pingbacks are totally awesome.
Not everybody falls into one of those categories (*weeps at all of the ideas she will never see on the shelf at the marketplace of ideas*), and not every post you make, you want to have that sort of feedback on. So, how to cut off the pingingbacking?
(1) Go to http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy and set Pingbacks to disabled. (DON'T DO IT! PINGBACKS ARE AWESOME!) That means that when you post and someone links to you, you won't receive a pingback notification, and when you link to someone in a post, they won't receive a pingback notification about your post.
(2) Ban pingback-bot, but leave your pingbacks on. I think that this will prevent you from getting notified when someone references you, but will still let them know that you've referenced them. (DO THIS INSTEAD OF OPTING OUT OF PINGBACKS! PARTICIPATE IN IDEA EXCHANGE; IT'S AWESOME!)
(3) If you don't want someone to know you referenced them in one particular entry, but it's cool most of the time, lock your post. Pingbacks don't work on flocked or private posts. It is now possible to control pingbacks on a per entry basis. Personally, I think that if you really don't want someone to know you referenced them, you should still flock. Anything unlocked on the Internet, anyone with Internet access can read.
Some caveats about the pingback dealio:
A) pingback-bot's comments are posted screened. This means that other people can only find out what third parties are saying about you if you unscreen their comments. PLEASE UNSCREEN PINGBACK-BOT ASAP. This promotes the linking between posts that pingbacks are meant to facilitate, and raises the general level of awesome. Also, if you only let friends comment on your LJ, you should friend pingback-bot, so it can comment on your LJ.
B) For the immediate future, pingbacks are only between paid users. Paid users are serving as guinea pigs to make sure the system works. In the future, it will work for Basic and Plus users. If you want to let everyone, on and off LJ, ping you, you can set that at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy as we discussed earlier. I THINK YOU SHOULD RESET TO OPEN (instead of the default Livejournal.com only), because…
C) Dreamwidth will, one day, support pingbacks, so pingbacks will promote intersite interoperability. INTEROPERABILITY IS AWESOME.
In short, Pingbacks are Love, and, also, all of those people bitching about how LJ should concentrate on giving users something they want are ignorant. People have wanted linkbacks since, well, since trackbacks were introduced in 2002, and bradfitz totally promised them before the sale to 6A.
Okay, so, say I write a piece of fanfiction, okay? And say, nobody comments on it, and I'm like, WHAT? It was hot. Also gay. Also hot. And I am sad. :/
But, say that other people were talking about my fanfiction and linking to it because I did, like, some crazy thing where everybody thinks that I am crazy. And they just didn't want to comment on my post because what if I went crazy at them?
Well, if they have pingbacks enabled, we can both be happy. Because they can have banned me from their journal, but pingback-bot will let me know that people were talking about my story. Yay!
Other situations where you might love to have pingbacks:
* Why look, you've been instarecced by someone who didn't comment on your original story post
* Oh help, you've been slashdotted by metafandom
* Oh my, you've been slashdotted by some BNF you have never heard of
* So, like, three years ago you wrote this meta you thought was awesome, and then you write new meta that is awesome(r) and links back to the old meta. Now everyone who starts at the old meta can see a comment linking to the new meta with little work on your part!
* Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and has misunderstood every word of your breathless prose, now you can go Tell Them How
* Hey! Someone wrote you an open letter or public apology (and they link to your post where you explained how they were Wrong On The Internet), but didn't send you an e-mail about it, because they don't actually like you that much
Okay, so, basically, pingbacks are really helpful in three ways:
(1) Finding out why all these people have suddenly come to your journal
(2) Finding out that people are riffing on what you said
(3) Connecting the dots between things you said
So, you know, people who vanity google themselves? People who can never get enough story feedback? People who like to shop around in the marketplace of ideas? These are the people for whom pingbacks are totally awesome.
Not everybody falls into one of those categories (*weeps at all of the ideas she will never see on the shelf at the marketplace of ideas*), and not every post you make, you want to have that sort of feedback on. So, how to cut off the pingingbacking?
(1) Go to http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy and set Pingbacks to disabled. (DON'T DO IT! PINGBACKS ARE AWESOME!) That means that when you post and someone links to you, you won't receive a pingback notification, and when you link to someone in a post, they won't receive a pingback notification about your post.
(2) Ban pingback-bot, but leave your pingbacks on. I think that this will prevent you from getting notified when someone references you, but will still let them know that you've referenced them. (DO THIS INSTEAD OF OPTING OUT OF PINGBACKS! PARTICIPATE IN IDEA EXCHANGE; IT'S AWESOME!)
(3) If you don't want someone to know you referenced them in one particular entry, but it's cool most of the time, lock your post. Pingbacks don't work on flocked or private posts. It is now possible to control pingbacks on a per entry basis. Personally, I think that if you really don't want someone to know you referenced them, you should still flock. Anything unlocked on the Internet, anyone with Internet access can read.
Some caveats about the pingback dealio:
A) pingback-bot's comments are posted screened. This means that other people can only find out what third parties are saying about you if you unscreen their comments. PLEASE UNSCREEN PINGBACK-BOT ASAP. This promotes the linking between posts that pingbacks are meant to facilitate, and raises the general level of awesome. Also, if you only let friends comment on your LJ, you should friend pingback-bot, so it can comment on your LJ.
B) For the immediate future, pingbacks are only between paid users. Paid users are serving as guinea pigs to make sure the system works. In the future, it will work for Basic and Plus users. If you want to let everyone, on and off LJ, ping you, you can set that at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy as we discussed earlier. I THINK YOU SHOULD RESET TO OPEN (instead of the default Livejournal.com only), because…
C) Dreamwidth will, one day, support pingbacks, so pingbacks will promote intersite interoperability. INTEROPERABILITY IS AWESOME.
In short, Pingbacks are Love, and, also, all of those people bitching about how LJ should concentrate on giving users something they want are ignorant. People have wanted linkbacks since, well, since trackbacks were introduced in 2002, and bradfitz totally promised them before the sale to 6A.