“Like I said, the update services shouldn’t be removed. But I imagine new users would prefer that Ping-o-Matic or other pinging services weren’t switched on by default since they’re still learning to use WordPress, and — I might add — are still evaluating it.”
I agree with this, as a new user (and someone new to blogging) who’s just been taken completely by surprise by the fact that WordPress isn’t just running my blog for me (fantastically well I have to say!) but has also taken it upon itself to start telling the world about it – well before I was ready for that, and without that being made at all clear to me. This to me is going beyond what the software ought to do by default. And even if it’s clear that more people want that there by default than don’t, it ought to be made clearer to the new user that that’s what’s going on – so we know to go and turn off the update service straight away if we don’t want it.
