Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I like Movable Type’s trackback, but the problem with it is that now there’s two areas whereby the popularity of a posting is judged – the comment count AND the trackback count.
If a posting is a zip-zip, should it just quietly fold its tent, wonder off into the desert – the dog seeking an elegant death? Or is the posting so powerful, graceful, and eloquent that the readers are literally struck silent by the sheer beauty of it.
(In this crowd? Are you kidding? The only way to strike this crowd silent is to hit them with a 2 x 4.)
This same issue comes to mind with ThreadNeedle – the very fact that you register a posting with ThreadNeedle implies that you think the posting is strong enough to generate comment, but what happens when the weather’s nice, the readers are lazy, and you score zip. If you use Movable Type and allow comments, your score would then be:
zip-zip-zip
Geez, only the strongest and most confident personality could survive this with ego unscathed.
This is changing one of my overall views of how to incorporate ThreadNeedle into a weblog. What I did NOT want from ThreadNeedle was another measure of ‘popularity’, which I dislike.
Thanks to Ben and Mena for the cool new technology. Also thanks for opening my eyes to a potential new problem with ThreadNeedle.
(Should I track this? Huh? Huh? Should I? Should I? Go ahead, you know you want to…)
