4 ms·

I was very annoyed the last time I looked at this. Webmentions are like trackbacks, but trackbacks that do not contain the information needed to show them, ins

by onli 11y ago

I was very annoyed the last time I looked at this. Webmentions are like trackbacks, but trackbacks that do not contain the information needed to show them, instead relying on the receiving party to fetch that information from a microformat (that part seems to be missing from the spec). What annoyed me so much that I opted to not implement it in any of those blog engines I'm involved in is that it is a useless re-invention of trackbacks. There is no point in webmentions, not one feature that could not be done with trackbacks as well. They have a wikipage arguing against trackbacks on https://indiewebcamp.com/Trackback https://indiewebcamp.com/Trackback, and all points on that page are wrong when looking at how blog engines actually implement trackbacks. Just take the first, fragile discovery: The critic is that the RDF comment needed for Trackbacks is is complex and get stripped. But frankly, it is not complex to grep for it and if you can't control your own page HTML to preserve comments, you have different problems (and one that could hit your microformat equally). More important: Trackbacks actually can be found via a rel-tag in the site head exactly like pingbacks (and I guess webmentions), rel=trackback. And of course blog engines verify that the origin really has a link to the receiving page, the spam problem is solved there exactly like with webmentions. What should be done is to take trackbacks and formalize the current solutions and extensions into a formal protocol. There is no need to willfully cut out the existing independent web, as in blogs, for a hipster indieweb movement. I guess I'm still annoyed.

pmlnr 11y ago
Do you use Trackbacks? Do you know anyone, who still uses Trackbacks? When what the last time you received a non-spam trackback? Because webmentions are alive. Sometimes you need to re-visit and re-pack things to bring them back again.
- onli 11y ago
  I use trackbacks, since my chosen blog engine (serendipity) supports them. I know a number of other bloggers and they all use trackbacks. My last non-spam trackback came in on Nov 9 2015, 08:02, ignoring the ones I sent to myself (I was not very active in the meantime). Trackbacks are alive as well. But yes, they should be revisited and repackaged, I agree that they could need a popularity boost. But that is possible without breaking compatibility for no reason.
  - pmlnr 11y ago
    Yes, Trackbacks or Pingbacks could have been extended to include a similar pull-parse behaviour as webmentions are doing right now. In fact I was reminded that originally webmentions were on top of pingbacks: http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comme... As far as I understand that change is mostly for simplification, which always a good thing.
    - onli 11y ago
      Being on top of pingbacks makes no sense, xml-rpc is dead and a bad idea in a first place, also a lot harder to implement than just reacting to a ping + pretty much incompatible with the pull concept. If they started there, they probably did not know trackbacks existed. Webmentions are no simpler than trackbacks, and to have them diverge for no reason makes everything more complicated for the engine. It is no straight-forward simplification at all, thus no good thing.
  - jeena 11y ago
    For backwards compatibility there is a (open source) tool which will forward pingbacks to your webmentions endpoint https://webmention.io/ https://webmention.io/
    - onli 11y ago
      Thanks for the link, I appreciate the idea. Sadly, this seems useless for me. I'd need a service that I can point to in the head that converts the webmention to a trackback (and not a pingback, though that would work as well if absolutely necessary, but by default pingbacks have no description which could collide in some themes; also a harder codepath) and then sends the trackback to the blog. Fetching that later with JS is no option, it has to end up in the database. I hope I did not just miss that (now again and when I saw it the last time), but this does not seem to capable of that.
      - aaronpk 11y ago
jeena 11y ago
> The critic is that the RDF comment needed for Trackbacks is is complex and get stripped. That is super valid and the main reason why I back then in 2004 didn't implement trackback in my bloging engine but only pingback. Semantics matter.
- onli 11y ago
  This is the RDF needed for trackback support (and like I said, rel=trackback exists as well):  How is that complicated? Where is the link to or the problem with semantics?
  - jeena 11y ago
    At least back then I found it mega complicated, I would have needed to screen the content of the page and find the comments most probably with a RegEx I guess? Then I would need to feed the comment strings I get into a XML parser which would understand namespaces. Then I would go through the DOM of every of those comments to get out the data. Apart from that I do not think you should compare pingback/webmention with trackback. The ones are to inform about some mention/comment, the other is transporting the content of it. If you want to compare than I would compare microformats/open-graph with trackback.
    - onli 11y ago
      You probably would not use an XML parser. All the information needed to send a trackback is the ping-location, that is one ugly regexpression, but only one. I also am no fan of that, rel=trackback is nicer. But the (pragmatic approach to) parsing is simpler than you describe. I'm actually not okay about the distinction. Trackbacks inform and transport the content, and webmentions inform and are coupled with an unspecified convention to get the content. They end up having the same purpose.

by onli 11y ago

pmlnr 11y ago

Do you use Trackbacks? Do you know anyone, who still uses Trackbacks? When what the last time you received a non-spam trackback? Because webmentions are alive. Sometimes you need to re-visit and re-pack things to bring them back again.

onli 11y ago
I use trackbacks, since my chosen blog engine (serendipity) supports them. I know a number of other bloggers and they all use trackbacks. My last non-spam trackback came in on Nov 9 2015, 08:02, ignoring the ones I sent to myself (I was not very active in the meantime). Trackbacks are alive as well. But yes, they should be revisited and repackaged, I agree that they could need a popularity boost. But that is possible without breaking compatibility for no reason.
- pmlnr 11y ago
  Yes, Trackbacks or Pingbacks could have been extended to include a similar pull-parse behaviour as webmentions are doing right now. In fact I was reminded that originally webmentions were on top of pingbacks: http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comme... As far as I understand that change is mostly for simplification, which always a good thing.
  - onli 11y ago
    Being on top of pingbacks makes no sense, xml-rpc is dead and a bad idea in a first place, also a lot harder to implement than just reacting to a ping + pretty much incompatible with the pull concept. If they started there, they probably did not know trackbacks existed. Webmentions are no simpler than trackbacks, and to have them diverge for no reason makes everything more complicated for the engine. It is no straight-forward simplification at all, thus no good thing.
- jeena 11y ago
  For backwards compatibility there is a (open source) tool which will forward pingbacks to your webmentions endpoint https://webmention.io/ https://webmention.io/
  - onli 11y ago
    Thanks for the link, I appreciate the idea. Sadly, this seems useless for me. I'd need a service that I can point to in the head that converts the webmention to a trackback (and not a pingback, though that would work as well if absolutely necessary, but by default pingbacks have no description which could collide in some themes; also a harder codepath) and then sends the trackback to the blog. Fetching that later with JS is no option, it has to end up in the database. I hope I did not just miss that (now again and when I saw it the last time), but this does not seem to capable of that.
    - aaronpk 11y ago

jeena 11y ago

> The critic is that the RDF comment needed for Trackbacks is is complex and get stripped. That is super valid and the main reason why I back then in 2004 didn't implement trackback in my bloging engine but only pingback. Semantics matter.

onli 11y ago
This is the RDF needed for trackback support (and like I said, rel=trackback exists as well):  How is that complicated? Where is the link to or the problem with semantics?
- jeena 11y ago
  At least back then I found it mega complicated, I would have needed to screen the content of the page and find the comments most probably with a RegEx I guess? Then I would need to feed the comment strings I get into a XML parser which would understand namespaces. Then I would go through the DOM of every of those comments to get out the data. Apart from that I do not think you should compare pingback/webmention with trackback. The ones are to inform about some mention/comment, the other is transporting the content of it. If you want to compare than I would compare microformats/open-graph with trackback.
  - onli 11y ago
    You probably would not use an XML parser. All the information needed to send a trackback is the ping-location, that is one ugly regexpression, but only one. I also am no fan of that, rel=trackback is nicer. But the (pragmatic approach to) parsing is simpler than you describe. I'm actually not okay about the distinction. Trackbacks inform and transport the content, and webmentions inform and are coupled with an unspecified convention to get the content. They end up having the same purpose.