WordPress.org

1. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Perhaps most of you have seen comments consisting of nothing much more than a post snippet between the text "[...]". This looks to be automated comment spam solely created, though, to produce some sort of "link back" (not to be confused with a real "linkback").

   Can anyone enlighten me on this? Does anyone not know what I mean -- and therefore shall I elaborate?

   P.S. Google does not allow for search non-alphanumeric searches, so Google is useless for tracking this down. And even wordpress.org's search function is useless, actually giving false positives as it finds '[' characters.

2. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Are these "Trackbacks"?

   Pardon my ignorance, but I have read the several documents about trackbacks, and they do not make much sense to me, sorry.

   Here is a link that shows what I mean (scroll down the page):

   http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2005/12/06/poisoning-the-well

3. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Here is a site that looks like is is automated to create these "link spams" (as I think of them). http://www.christian.luiscorreia.com/ Note that all the posts start with:

   "[link] wrote an interesting post today on
   Here’s a quick excerpt"

   And end with:

   "Read the rest of this great post here".

   Most of the links are to WordPress blogs.

   P.S. If this topic is covered somewhere else, or inappropriate for this forum, please set me straight. Thank you.

4. whooami
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Are these "Trackbacks"?

   Yes.

5. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Thanks whooami.

   I am reading

   http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/docs/trackback_spec

   and

   http://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/TestTrack/category/test/

   and am still confused!

6. whooami
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging

   WordPress has a wonderful set of documentation available right before your eyes. The differences between trackbacks and comments are explained within ..

7. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Thanks again whooami... I understand more now.

   However, it still explains nothing about the mechanisms or mechanics behind how the "excerpt" is created, nor anything about the "[...]". Do you happen to know more about this?

   All the trackbacks my site has, and many I have (now) seen are pretty badly formated. Here is an example:

   [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onExcerpt from site was posted here ... [...]

   The formatting and grammar being terrible. Far better it seems to me would be something like:

   Trackback From [website]: Comment about post.

   Like, something obvious that it is a trackback!

   I mean, this is all kind of poorly implemented, although designed well.

8. whooami
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Do you happen to know more about this?

   I do, yes.

   If you consider a trackback a remote comment than the formatting and grammar issues you mention are answered for.

   The excerpt is controlled by the content posted on the site that is sending the trackback.

   You can tweek WordPress to control the size of the excerpt, whether or not the excerpt is even displayed, and what to display in it's absence. Atleast you used to be able to -- my install is tweeked at least.

9. mrfrazzlebottom
   Member
   Posted 5 years ago #
   

   Then, of the "trackback" comment:

   [...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onExcerpt from site was posted here ... [...]

   The text "Excerpt from site was posted here ... " is controlled by MY wordpress install, and the leading text "[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today on" along with the trailing "[...]" is the remote comment? (More or less?)

   Hey, thanks for all your help! I needed it.

Topic Closed

This topic has been closed to new replies.