The ecosystem is designed to give folks an idea of what is going on out in the blogosphere, and open trackbacks introduce distorting effects. Do I benefit from a bit of that distortion? Probably.

Irascible tomcat Mr. Gato’s companion animal, Barry Campbell of enrevanche, suggests algorithm tweaking may explain our blog’s recent precipitous rise in the TTLB Ecosystem, even as his own blog status has risen from Marauding Marsupial to Large Mam…

I think Mr. Bear is providing a valuable servie, and his dedication to preserving the INTENT of the rankings is remarkable.

Forgive me for speaking for the rest of you and please correct me if I am wrong. The reason we participate in Open Trackbacks is to drive readers to our sites. Yes we do this because we love it but we also want folks to read our fantastic, insightful, and unique opinions. At least we like to think they are. We are not doing it to game the system. Are you?

And it works! If your topic is interesting, if your headline grabs the readers attention they will click the link and start reading. That is the whole idea behind Open Ttrackbacks. No one is forced to click on your link and no one is forced to follow a link back to the Open Trackback provider.

I certainly, and again speaking for others we are very appreciative to fellow bloggers who provide Open Trackbacks either weekly or in some cases daily. The Political Teen who alone has sent hundreds of readers my way has been a godsend for my fledgling blog. Others like Don Surber and Basil who do daily Open Trackbacks, and the entire Open Trackback Alliance who alternate days between them are providing a fantastic service to bloggers and readers alike. They match folks who have something interesting to say with folks who want something interesting to read it. If they get rewarded by driving readership to their own blogs they deserve it.

Now before disagreeing with La Shawn I want to say I do not believe she meant any offense to Open Trackbackers and her post was meant to be strictly constructive. I know from personal experience and she has posted numerous times that she believes in helping new bloggers. So please understand my following comments are also meant to be constructive.

More here:

http://therealuglyamerican.blogspot.com/2005/11/open-trackbacks-and-ttlb-ecosystem.html

Merci beaucoup for the heads up. I usually get it right but sometimes can’t remember the rule. And there’s nothing snarky about correcting my grammar or my spelling. FYI, I LOVE typo nitpickers. – Admin

I said I’d had my last word on this Open Trackbacks then, but then Lashawn Barber said something and I had to respond. First of all she says:

People, people, people! Don’t get it twisted. Use common sense. The Bear is not excluding trackbacks as li…

Forgive me for speaking for the rest of you and please correct me if I am wrong. The reason we participate in Open Trackbacks is to drive readers to our sites. Yes we do this because we love it but we also want folks to read our fantastic, insightful, …

NZ Bear Killing the Trackback Parties, this according to Jay at Stop the ACLU. Don Surber has the details. I never understood how blogs with much less traffic than mine could be so much higher than me in the rankings

Since I didn’t post yesterday I’d like to do a round up post of some of the posts I enjoyed this week. To begin with let’s start with La Shawn’s post about those Trackback Parties we see going on. I

First, I think this is a good idea, as I’ve noted on my blog today.

I have to go with Sabertooth on this one. While NZ is trying to hit the open trackback parties, he is also targeting inline trackbacks. The distinction is a bit fuzzy, and it is completely appropriate that he hit both. Sites that do inline trackbacks essentially had the effect of making their trackbacks look like manual links written by the blogger, for the sake of the TTLB ranking.

Way to go, N.Z. This will definitely help to make the rankings more reflective of reality in terms of content, traffic and linkage.

Eric