[wp-hackers] new: WordPress Validator plug-in

[Phil Ringnalda]

ifelse wrote:
> Anyone else feel that this mail feels a bit spammy itself?

Misleading and ineffective, at least. Were it me, I would have said 
something more like "new release of the plugin we told you about back in 
August, which now adds foo and bar..."

> Besides, isn't the premise behind this plugin "Trackback URLs that point to
> pages that don't link back to your blog are bogus" technically incorrect
> even if it is pragmatic in eliminating spam?

Absolutely. The plugin could just as easily be called "Turn Trackback 
into Pingback" (as Matt noted when they first announced it). One of the 
best examples, from when this first came up years ago, was "I see people 
posting all the time, asking 'why is the sky blue?' so I wrote a post 
explaining why, and when I see someone asking I send a Trackback ping to 
their post, so they and any readers who also wonder can find my answer. 
Since someone who has read my explanation doesn't have any reason to 
want to read hundreds of questions asking 'why?' I don't link to every 
post I ping."

You are of course free to ignore any ping that doesn't link to you, just 
like you are free to ignore any ping that includes the word "pink" and 
any ping that doesn't include "blue," but it's very much open to false 
positives.

Phil Ringnalda