Listed in no particular order are things I don’t like about blogs and blogging:
1. Bloggers who trackback to a post on this blog but fail to link to this blog in their post.
Rule of thumb: If you trackback to another blogger’s post, you must link to the post you referenced. I’d guess that 90 percent of the blogosphere would agree that sending a trackback and failing to link is highly irritating, and many bloggers will delete your trackback. What is the rationale? By leaving a trackback, you’re alerting the blog host and readers that you’re writing about the same topic. The blog host follows the trackback expecting to see what you wrote about his post.
(Update: It’s also about reciprocity. When you leave a trackback here, readers follow it to your blog. In turn, your readers follow the link on your blog to mine. )
2. Online news sites that don’t link to blogs mentioned in a story.
3. High-traffic bloggers who forget to link to my blog or mistakenly link to a different blog in a post where my blog is the subject.
4. Bloggers who write long posts about why they have no time to blog.
5. Bloggers who write about their latest illness, right down to the details of an infection and physical description of a rash.
6. Commenters who respond to a post without actually reading the whole post, or if they have read it, the comment doesn’t reflect it.
7. People who leave off-topic comments on a post to tell me they just e-mailed me.
8. Bloggers whose posts are mainly complaints against other bloggers.
9. Bloggers who don’t include any biographical information about themselves. Even if blogging anonymously, you can still supply basic, non-indentifying information.
10. Bloggers who either don’t list contact information or make it difficult to find.
This post will be updated as I think of other things I don’t like.
Update II: The Anchoress has ditched Blog*Spot! Visit her new WordPress home. And update your blogrolls.
Update III (4/10): A trackback is simply a way to communicate with another blogger. I will refer to a third-party trackback system called Simpletracks because each blog or commenting platform (HaloScan, WordPress, Movable Type, etc.) has a different method for tracking back to posts.
Let’s say you’re blogging about this post and you want me and the readers to know about it. If you click on “Comments/Trackbacks” and scroll to the end, you’ll see this:
The URI to TrackBack this entry is:
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2005/04/09/peeves/trackback/.
URI is short for Uniform Resource Identifier. This is more information than you’ll need to trackback, but in case you’re curious…
When using Simpletracks, you will need to copy the trackback URI above (which is different with each post), the name of your blog, your post title, post URI, and an excerpt of the post, and post them in the appropriate place, and hit “Send Ping.”
Your blog will ping my blog, and the trackback will show up in “Comments/Trackbacks” like this:
The ten habits of highly irritating bloggers
According to La Shawn Barber, anyway: 1. Bloggers who trackback to a post on this blog but fail to link to this blog in their post. I’m usually pretty good about…Trackback by dustbury.com — 04.09.05 @ 3:06 pm
Clicking on “dustbury.com” will take you directly to the post where this post is mentioned. In WordPress, trackback entries are truncated and post titles are in bold. Depending on which blog publishing system you use, trackbacking will be slightly different. For instance, Movable Type automatically pings URIs in the post, so it’s unnecessary to enter URIs manually. In WordPress (version 1.2.2), I have to copy and paste trackback URIs just below the post. If you’re using HaloScan, you have to go to that site to send a trackback.
Trackbacking sounds more complicated than it should. The concept is very simple.
