KNotations

Sigh... I really didn't want to have to spend the time to implement this, but we decided it was made necessary by the nastiness of some of the trackback spam we've been seeing.

There is now a property in all KNotes weblogs, as well as a sitewide setting in the tool itself, for controlling whether trackbacks need approval before they are displayed. By default, this is set so that only approved trackbacks display. We will shortly be providing a weblog properties interface for managing this and other properties at the weblog level. The sitewide property is set through the tool in the ZMI - kndiscuss_sql (KNotes Config Tool). The sitewide property is acquired if the weblog property is not set.

There are new interfaces for moderating and managing trackbacks. See the screenshot for an example of the manage-trackbacks TTW (through the web) interface. If there are pending trackbacks, managers will see a portlet (in Plone content) or a sidebar (in KNotes content) for Managing Trackbacks. The number of pending trackbacks is listed there, along with a link to the TTW management interface. The manage-trackback RSS feed noe includes an indication of the workflow status of each item. We'll be adding links from there directly into setting the status - currently there is a link to delete each trackback but not for approving or rejecting. We'll also be adding interfaces for managing trackbacks wherever they are displayed ( in detail views, sidebars, portlets and plone-content comments views); and will also consider an interface for non-managers to report offensive trackbacks.

By the way - We've also been making a lot of progress on other aspects of KNotes recently, but that will have to wait for another entry here :O)

We've made good progress on tools to make trackbacks easy to monitor and manage. By the end of the week, we'll have deployed a pretty thorough suite. In tests on our own content, these make it easy to bash trackback spams almost as soon as they come in.

There are two new through the web templates:

weblog.trackbacks

This is a weblog-specific template which can be invoked on a weblog or any content within it. It displays a batched aggregate weblog view of the trackbacks within that content, with affordances to delete trackbacks if you have manager role. This template will soon become the 'more' link from the 'recent trackbacks' sidebar, and we'll also hav a link to it from the stats sidebar

trackback_admin

This is a Plone template which can be invoked on a Plone portal itself, or on any content within it. It requires manager role. It provides a batched listing of all trackbacks within the content (either flat or deep) with checkboxes for selecting items to delete

There is also a new RSS feed - TBs.xml - which can be invoked on any Plone or KNotes content. It demands authentication by a member with manager role, anf takes an optional limit search argument. It lists (deep) trackbacks anywhere ithin the content it is invoked on. The item display includes links to the content rceiving the trackback, the URL source for the trackback, and - especially convenient - a direct DELETE THIS TRACKBACK link. Clicking the delete link in an item calls the delete script through the web ( and will demand authentication if you are not already logged in ). We have used this feed successfully in netnewswire on os-x but at the moment are not getting authentication to work in the windows readers we've tried. i we annot get this working in a widerrange of readers by the end of the week, we'll change our plan - if so, we'll post a notice here to that effect.

See the screenshot for an annotated anatomy of the special RSS feed.

The only definition I ever found that created the lighbulb moment I was feeling was “Social software is stuff that gets spammed.” Not a perfect definition, but servicable in its way.

I hate spammers and dirty, venal link-farming vandals. I really, really hate them.

But they are out there, and they have noticed how useful trackback 2-way linking has been in raising the google page ranking of well-connected weblogs.

The link-farming spammers may also have noticed that the boost to the page ranks of well connected weblogs has, through the development of blogging, been a good thing for seekers after good content and for google: it helped people to find what they were looking for by googling it, and it helped them to browse around communities of discourse in fascinating and useful ways. They may have noticed this, but it has not stopped them from adding noise, aggravation and ugliness to the system by perpetrating trackback-spam.

In this post, I briefly explain trackback spam, and outline the measures we are planning to help the managers of KNotes content to resist the spammers by keeping spam links out of their own content. Click the permalink ("Continue reading this item") for more...