My friend Charles Pizzo sent me a text message to let me know he was trying to trackback from his blog to mine, but it wasn’t working. Some research with the folks at Expression Engine revealed that it has to do with the randomization feature, which they desribe this way:

A random code number will be added to the end of each Trackback URL displayed on your site. This code will be stored in the database. When a Trackback is received the code must match in order to be accepted. This feature works similar to the Captcha feature in the comment preferences. It’s purpose is to prevent “throttling”. Only one trackback per code number will be accepted.

So I disabled it. That was yesterday. Today, most of my posts going all the way back to the start of the blog are infected with trackback spam. It’ll take me hours to delete it all. (At least I’ll have something to do in my hotel room in San Antonio tonight!) I’ve re-enabled the randomizer and hope that the impending upgrade of Expression Engine will fix the problem. In the meantime, I’m wondering how much trackback and comment spam will diminish the desirability of reading and maintaining blogs? After all, it’s already having an impact on the credibility and desirability of e-mail.