Yesterday I commented on a post by Seth Godin here on this blog. I did this because Seth chooses not to enable comments (which is totally cool by me). He has enabled trackbacks however. I drafted my thoughts and published the post. In Wordpress this is all one has to do to join a conversation. But when I returned this morning to see how the conversation had progressed over night, my post was nowhere to be found.

It took me several minutes to realize that my post hadn’t registered as a trackback because Seth uses Moveable Type (MT). Why is this significant? Wordpress (the platform that powers this blog) automatically handles trackbacks. When I publish a post, Wordpress attempts to notify the blogs I have linked to. If it is successful, then my post is registered as a trackback and the author I have linked to is notified. Similarly, whenever someone links to a post of mine, Wordpress notes this and includes the trackback along with any other comments that have been left on my blog. In short, whenever I want to join a conversation, all I have to do is post my thoughts. Like the good wingman that he is, Wordpress magically handles the introductions.

The same is not true for Moveable Type. Each post on an MT blog has a trackback url that is different from the permanent link of the post. Before I could join the conversation on Seth’s blog, I had to locate the trackback link of his post. Then I drafted my post - linking to the permanent link of the post for human readers - and then had to add the trackback link (the computer readable reference). The trackback link has to be entered into an obscure field in the Worpress Admin screen which, presumably, exists solely to trackback to posts on MT blogs.

It’s not a huge deal, but little platform quirks like this inhibit the natural flow of conversation. When I link to another blog, in my mind, the gesture has been made. Moveable Type’s trackback process is like telling a woman you like her shoes and then, upon returning home, drafting a handwritten letter to the same effect.

Update: And sure enough, I forgot to add the trackback to for this post!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Blogging, Usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.