March 2, 2005
Trackback or comment?
I read Barbara's bgblogging: Trackback Recap post with interest this morning (after a trackback to my trackback) because I am working on shifting my online Teaching with the Internet class from its current Course Management System (CMS) format to a mixed format of blogs, wikis, and the CMS. I am creating a brief lesson called "anatomy of a blog" and was toying with explaining the difference between Comments and Trackbacks.
In an earlier post, Barbara notes:
I admit I am a more selfish user of the Web, choosing to respond to other people's blogs via Trackback for the mostpart because I like to hang onto my thoughts on whatever topic I've responded to, weaving them into the archives of this evolving one-teacher's- reflection kind of blog, and I can't do that on someone else's blog. I want to see the evolution of my thinking on technology in the classroom, and most of the time I am interested in a line or so of someone else's posting, and so I use Trackback.
I feel the same way. When I comment, I feel like my thoughts are lost and I cannot go back and find them later. However, I do use comments when I just have a quick remark or point and I am not interested in continuing a dialog on a topic. Most of the blogs I now read have come about because I follow trackbacks to their owners and can find out more about that person.
On a more practical level, students need to understand the difference because some blogs turn off one or the other of these methods on their sites to combat spam.
Since I have a very wide range of technology comfort levels in my course, I do not want to overwhelm people who are already anxious and, in some ways, trackbacks vs. comments are one of those things that seem to me to be an unnecessary distinction. Why doesn't someone create a single UI that automatically makes this distinction for the user?
Posted by Rovy at March 2, 2005 4:54 AM