• Jan 7, 2004

    Blacklist weblog.cemper.com if you don't want vaguely related TrackBacks

    I'm deliberately making a point to let everyone know of my recommendation that they should blacklist weblog.cemper.com if they do not wish to receive TrackBacks that are only marginally related from the aforementioned weblog. I wrote about this before and I haven't forgotten that I said Christoph Cemper "isn't a TrackBack spammer". That opinion still hasn't changed because he isn't a spammer in the conventional sense, as Jay Allen has mentioned. I also don't want to begin a debate on what qualifies as TrackBack spam and what doesn't.

    I do, however, want to point out to anyone who chances upon this entry that Christoph has had a series of complaints made against him for his TrackBack pings. All are dismayed to find his entries from which the TrackBack pings were sent are minimally related to their own entries. Therefore, I recommend those of you with blacklist software of some sort like MT-Blacklist to put "weblog.cemper.com" into your blacklist to save yourselves future work in removing TrackBacks you most likely would rather not have.

    At this point though, I'd like to make a disclaimer that this is solely my opinion and my own recommendation that you do so. You also shouldn't just do what I say - if this issue concerns you at all, take it upon yourself to investigate the grounds for my recommendation. To that end, I have compiled a list of related weblog entries and links to start you off with at the bottom of this entry.

    Christoph Cemper also addresses the complaints made in his entry addressing TrackBack Spam complaints. Another blogger, Camilo, wrote a nicely composed argument on Spam and censorship. In his entry, he questions the use of a clearinghouse as a form of censorship. I agree with him and have made it clear that it wasn't my intention to censor Cemper.

    To Mr. Christoph Cemper: Don't take this as a personal attack. I just don't see your side of the argument and as far as I can tell you are still doing it and annoying other bloggers.

    This is the list (so far) of bloggers I know who complained (and links to their corresponding entry, if any):

  • Jan 2, 2004

    The monthly report - December 2003

    redemption in a blog received 13,728 visits for the month of December 2003, meaning there were an average of 442 visits daily.

    Most visited entries:

    Of note:

    • A new year, a new webhost - I've just changed my webhost to a dirt cheap webhosting plan at PinchPenny. Not that there was anything wrong with my last host, but PinchPenny had unlimited add-on domains that was just too good to miss, and there being end-year promotions (I get 10% off for as long as I'm a PinchPenny customer) as well. Besides, I was using almost my full bandwidth allocation (1,824,125KB - wait, Google can convert that to GB... It's 1.74GB) at my last host, who kindly sponsored my hosting. Just didn't feel right.
    • MT-Blacklist Updater is a simple PHP script I wrote to keep my MT-Blacklist setup updated automatically with any changes in the master blacklist at the Comment Spam Clearinghouse. What was interesting was I screwed up completely at my first try. Nevertheless, it works now, and feedback like this makes me smile.

    As always, thanks for reading, and a Happy New Year to one and all!

    Past monthly reports:

  • Jan 1, 2004

    Changing webhosts - temporarily funky

    I'm in the process of changing my webhost for this site so some things may seem funky at the moment.

    In any case, a Happy New Year ahead to all!

  • Dec 29, 2003

    Nice comment postbit from vantan.org

    Fellow Singaporean Vanessa Tan has a nicely designed weblog, totally deserving of being nominated for Best Designed Blog at the Asia Weblog Awards 2003. One of the nicest bits is the comment postbit ("postbit" as in "forum postbit" parlance) which I had oohed and aahed over for some time before deciding to copy it. Yup copy it I did, and left a comment for Vanessa to let her know I was using her idea. Of course I said that I would take it down if she didn't like me stealing her idea.

    Naturally, it was my bad for assuming that I could do something like this, because Vanessa actually had a no derivative works Creative Commons license and I had not attributed her. I found out when she posted an entry on her copyright notice, and have been trying to figure out how to attribute her in a way that is at once visible yet non-intrusive to readers. I think I have figured out a way by placing this bit of text in the comments section:

    The paper doll icon that precedes each comment is an idea conceived by Vanessa Tan.

    Want to see it? Post a (non-spam!) comment on this weblog.

  • Dec 29, 2003

    Sending TrackBack pings indiscriminately makes you a TrackBack spammer

    Yesterday I received 2 TrackBack pings for my entries on MT-Blacklist Updater and my October 2003 monthly report. What is interesting about these TrackBack pings is that the entries they were sent from had almost nothing to do with what was discussed in my entries. I began to think that I have got my very first TrackBack spam. Am I really famous? The answer to that question, of course, is an emphatic no (thanks for the compliments though, Kyrah).

    Being curious and, as I'd like to think, benevolent, I decided to post a comment on one of the suspect TrackBack-happy entries:

    I've no idea why you sent a TrackBack ping to my weblog entry which has totally nothing to do with the things discussed here. I have deleted it.

    I looked through your entries and noticed that you pinged other people too.

    I hope you aren't offended if I begin to think you are a Trackback spammer! Unless you have a good explanation, I will submit your Trackbacks as spam to Jay's comment spam clearinghouse!

    It was later that I found out that at least 2 other guys, Heiko Hebig and Martin, received the TrackBack pings of the same suspect nature as I did. Hmmm... it seemed that we may be onto a spammer here. But that would be jumping to conclusions a little too early. I have been going on without saying anything about the person or the weblog which sent the TrackBacks, but I have to make it clear here that it is my view that the mentioned person isn't a TrackBack spammer, but rather a (very) misguided TrackBack-trigger-happy blogger.

    Christoph Cemper has responded to our complaints with an entry entitled TrackBack Spam complaints. He says the purpose of sending TrackBack pings is to

    notify others that you wrote about the same thing

    and later goes on to say:

    to notify Person B was my intention.

    Yes that is very much the reason for sending TrackBack pings, but I have to question how what Christoph wrote about can qualify as the "same thing" when they can hardly be qualified as vaguely related. Don't think so? Check out my entries and the pings Christoph sent (see bottom of this entry). Ahem! Just because my entry mentions "Google PageRank" doesn't mean that your entry on Google PageRank is a form of "continuing the discussion", much less writing about the same thing. At least, that is how I interpret the way TrackBack should work.

    As a last note, I leave it to readers to judge for themselves the relatedness of the entries from which TrackBack pings were sent to my entries. For my entry on MT-Blacklist Updater, this is the pinging entry. For my October 2003 monthly report, this is the pinging entry.

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