Ping, ping, ping goes the pingy thingy

In theory trackback pings are a wonderful idea - a notification that another site has linked to mine. A beacon of light shining through an often murky internet. In practice however, they've been subverted as yet another vehicle for the trafficking of spam. At least that's my assumption - the possibility exists that my site has simply become extremely popular with a certain category of purveyors of content of dubious morality, but I consider that an unlikely outcome. A rare drop of trackback spam turned into a slow but steady trickle. That mere trickle grew to a constant flow and has now finally matured into a veritable torrent. And each ping received has sent a notification mail spinning towards me. The flutter of excitement each new mail brings quickly giving into despondency as it turns out to be just another attempt to lure me into purchasing... well, the less said about those the better. It's true that I could have turned off the notification mechanism, but I simply couldn't bring myself to do it. The possibility that might miss something of consequence as a result - another unlikely outcome I confess - would gnaw at me.

I put up with it longer than I should have, especially when it turns out that there's a relatively straightforward solution. Spamlookup, a plugin which is already included in MT3.2 I believe. It's done the job mighty spiffily indeed. Nary a single ping in the last 24 hours. Of course, it's possible that it's currently blocking real pings too, so if any kind person would care to link back to any entry on my site as a test, I'd be terribly grateful.

I'm running it in conjunction with MTBlacklist, which itself has done a fine job of blocking that other blog curse, comment spam. The one wrinkle I did encounter was that Spamlookup blocked a comment posted by my good self on the grounds that it contained "questionable content" - I should stress in my defence that unless it was criticising my spelling or grammar, the content contained within my comment was wholly innocent. Still, a small adjustment to ensure that Spamlookup only concerns itself with trackback spam solved the problem. That said, if any of you have a problem posting a comment, do let me know.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to attend to the washing machine. I'm down to my last pair of socks and my need for clean underwear has finally trumped my creeping dread that if I try to use the washing machine it's going to flood my lovely new flat. Wish me luck!