:Web Application Usability

Trackback from Phil and Dave: Phil Rignalda has a quibble about Trackback. He lists out different types of trackbacking and list out their problems. “If a link is the only way to ping, you’re limiting your users; if you can’t ping a TB URL with every post in a category, you’re limiting your users; if you can’t accept pings for more than just single entries, you’re limiting your users.” Also Dave thinks that referrers are enough.

My thoughts on trackback are a little different. A Link is a vote cast by a site for another site. If linking is automated, we might have future problems, like authentication, which Roger Benningfield pointed out. Also, Porn sites are using scriptings referrers site to post their url, without puting a link on their site, to increase their google rating. Now scripting appears in the searchs for porn. I think we should try to get Google allow bloggers to ping them and get their database updated when a blog updates. If google updates faster than it is currently doing, we can just use the “related to” query in the google apis to list all trackbacks. Google will automatically filter the reoccurring sites.

How it should be done: (incoherent notes) My pages are related to all the pages that link to my page (if people come to my site through a particular link, I am more connected to the page on that link => My blog is related to all the sites that come with the users keyword search results.). When categorizing a post along categories, the post is connected to sites in that category. The user links to a site on his post or gives it a category. Categories on the sites are the names of the directories in which related urls are put in, and they have an OPML output. Clicking on the category takes to a page with other links and posts related to that category. Currently, on many blogs, clicking on a category lists only the posts that relate to the category. This could also lead to the redesign of the “Add Link” interface in a text editor.

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