Anil Dash cheers as Six Apart finally tries to address trackback spam
Jeremy Zawodny laments that trackback is dead - and Anil Dash quickly jumps in to wax lyrical about the anti-spam features of MT 3.2.
Not bad - it’s more than two-years since trackback moderation was requested for MovableType because of trackback spam problems.
As someone who bought multiple MovableType licences, I’m pretty appalled by the attitude of SixApart towards automated spamming problems.
One big reason why automated comment and trackback spamming has become such a problem, is that companies - especially MovableType - never took respsonsibility to empower webmasters with the tools they needed to protect themselves.
As a free product it would simply be irresponsible, but as a paid product I find that attitude appalling.
Anil Dash make be pleased with MT 3.2, but before he gives himself a pat on the back, it’s worth noting that the much higher quality Wordpress platform was already dealing with automated comment and trackback issues a long time ago.
For a comparison of MovableType vs Wordpress, check this out: Comparing Blog platforms: MovableType vs Wordpress
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We’ve had plugins available that offer TrackBack moderation for over two years now. Which is the same method that other platforms use to address their anti-spamming functionality.
What I was speaking to is that our platform has a junk folder that auto-deletes, which no other platform offers. That means, in Movable Type, even if something is falsely indicated as spam, you won’t lose that comment or TrackBack, and you’ll have a record of what happened to it.
Finally, in regards to quality, I’m not sure how you judge these things, but I’d invite you to compare our open beta process and focus on quality to any other platform, especially in regard to our disclosure of, and response to, important application updates. I find that professional bloggers don’t like having to update their blog platform every week or so, especially for poorly-explained security updates. With Movable Type, we’ve worked hard to eliminate those kinds of hassles.
Comment by Anil — August 25, 2005 @ 6:34 pm
Thank you for the considered response, Anil - what I find particularly frustrating was the apparent reliance on third-parties to provide those anti-spam tools.
MovableType has been a targeted platform for automated spamming processes for years, yet the inability of Six Apart to apply default anti-spam tools to the MT releases in my opinion was an abrogation of responsibility.
Comment by Brian Turner — August 29, 2005 @ 9:14 am