Trackback pony? March 12, 2012 8:39 PM   Subscribe

Any way we can be notified about people linking to our posts/comments?

Getting the odd long-tail favorite from an older post or comment isn't that uncommon, but when something I posted in 2010 gets two favorites in the space of an hour, a year and a half later, I start to wonder if someone has linked to it in a more recent thread. As such thread is likely to be of interest to me, I was hoping there might be a way of letting the authors of posts/comments know about trackbacks.

Ideally, it'd be something we could turn off, if we didn't want to know, or something we'd have to opt-in on in the first place.

Pretty, pretty please?
posted by valkyryn to Feature Requests at 8:39 PM (31 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite

Yeah, I've thought this too -- something you knocked out ages ago suddenly gets three favorites in a day and you wonder why. It seems like it might be way more work/code cruft than it warrants (particularly because vanity plays at least some part), so I never brought it up, but I can definitely see the use here, at least from a curiosity perspective.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:47 PM on March 12, 2012


I like this idea!
posted by two lights above the sea at 8:48 PM on March 12, 2012


But I thought favorites are actually symbols of contempt and derision.
posted by KokuRyu at 8:49 PM on March 12, 2012 [8 favorites]


There was a greasemonkey script for this, back in the day, which never worked quite as well as I'd hoped it would. I would love this feature.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:56 PM on March 12, 2012


You could always just site-search the post/comment ID number to turn up any recent links (i.e., http://metatalk.metafilter.com/21535/Trackback-pony or http://metatalk.metafilter.com/21535/Trackback-pony#974963).
posted by Rhaomi at 9:00 PM on March 12, 2012 [29 favorites]


You could always just site-search the post/comment ID number to turn up any recent links

You totally can. I had no idea. And I found exactly what I was looking for.

Awesome.
posted by valkyryn at 9:06 PM on March 12, 2012


Yeah I do that all the time. A built-in trackback actually wouldn't be very useful, because I've found that most of those longtail favorites come from people linking to the thread the comment was in rather than the comment itself.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:35 PM on March 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


Rhaomi has it! You can tune into your Favorites page and see new favorites coming in and then do the search to see if something has been linked recently. There isn't a great way to automate this on our end because we don't index links. Comments and posts are just big blobs of text as far as the database is concerned, so we don't know when a comment has a link to something by a particular user. Maybe that's something we can think about changing, but until then we're not set up for this level of personal tracking.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:37 PM on March 12, 2012


Implants are the wave of the future.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:44 PM on March 12, 2012


I had no idea TrackBack Pony was still dj'ing, but that cat was legendary back in the day.
posted by mannequito at 10:20 PM on March 12, 2012 [2 favorites]


New activity on old favourites can also happen without anyone linking to your comment at all. I have noticed one AskMe answer I posted ages ago sometimes gets new favourites when a new post on a similar topic appears. If that new post includes my answers's parent thread in Related Posts at the bottom, I assume that someone went to that thread and read my old answer.
posted by maudlin at 10:38 PM on March 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


Related? What is the meaning of that little yellow triangle in the lefthand
margin?
posted by SLC Mom at 11:33 PM on March 12, 2012


The triangle points to the comment you clicked on.

For example, right now the last four comments on this page are from mannequito, maudlin, you, and then me, right here. If someone linked to any of these comments specifically it wouldn't be clear without the triangle which of the comments showing up on that part of the page was the one targeted unless you moused over each time stamp and visually tried to match the number to the comment number in the url.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:24 AM on March 13, 2012


New activity on old favourites can also happen without anyone linking to your comment at all.

True. Old posts and especially old AskMes do pick up the odd favorite here or there. That's just search engines at work. But when, for example, my October 2010 post on eschatology gets three favorites in March 2012, odds are decent that there's been a link.

Which is what happened. I missed a post on Harold Camping, the guy who made concrete predictions about the Second Coming, and a user linked to my older post by way of background.
posted by valkyryn at 3:52 AM on March 13, 2012


Navelgazer: "There was a greasemonkey script for this, back in the day, which never worked quite as well as I'd hoped it would. I would love this feature."

You probably mean MetaFilter Why Favorited, which works, but it depends on people favoriting your posts/comments due to someone's link. There's no way to do it otherwise from the client-side (short of searching for the URL of every post and comment you've ever made).
posted by Plutor at 5:51 AM on March 13, 2012


The reason I post so much is to insure a reliable stream of residual favorites in the future after I stop working.
posted by Trurl at 6:42 AM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


There's also google's link: search operator, but it doesn't seem to be working nearly as good as it used to. Guess they want you to buy adwords for your page before they'll give you a really comprehensive breakdown of who's linking to you.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:53 AM on March 13, 2012


Which is what happened. I missed a post on Harold Camping, the guy who made concrete predictions about the Second Coming, and a user linked to my older post by way of background.

Yeah, that was me. I don't think I realized how far back that post was when I posted the link. It seemed like only yesterday.
posted by jquinby at 7:58 AM on March 13, 2012


Thanks,Taz
posted by SLC Mom at 8:03 AM on March 13, 2012


Google's index in general isn't as comprehensive as it used to be. EG: the trouble I had finding my own comment.
posted by Mitheral at 8:07 AM on March 13, 2012


This comment has gotten three favourites in the last 24 hours, after a good six weeks dormant. I can't figure out why, and site search doesn't seem to be doing anything for me – I have to agree this does make me curious when it happens, especially when I can't find anything linking back to that thread in particular.
posted by Shepherd at 8:44 AM on March 13, 2012


supercres linked to the thread (not the comment) in a high-traffic AskMe post just before those favorites were logged.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:52 AM on March 13, 2012


Ahhhh, I was using site search but I wasn't paying attention to the selector dropdown, and searching only Meta. Thanks, Rhaomi!
posted by Shepherd at 8:53 AM on March 13, 2012


valkyryn, I just sent a friend the link to your Burden of History post.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:05 AM on March 13, 2012


similar, previously (the answer was no)
posted by desjardins at 9:51 AM on March 13, 2012


The triangle points to the comment you clicked on.

Also there is a greasemonkey script to turn the triangle into a hedgehog.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:57 AM on March 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


jessamyn: " Also there is a greasemonkey script to turn the triangle into a hedgehog."

....which cannot be buggered at all?
posted by zarq at 10:30 AM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


Nah, I bet there's a greasemonkey script for that too.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:34 AM on March 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


FRENCHY: What did you do this summer, Sandy?
SANDY: Oh, I spent most of it in the jungle. I met a monkey there.
RIZZO: Haul your cookies all the way to the jungle for some ape?
SANDY: Well, he was sorta special ...

(SINGING)

MONKEY: Jungle lovin', had me a blast
SANDY: Jungle lovin', happened so fast
MONKEY: I met a girl, crazy for me
SANDY: Met a side-branch, on the evolutionary tree
DANNY & SANDY: Jungle days driftin' away, to uh! oh the jungle nights

ALL: Well-a, well-a, well-a, huh!
GUYS: Tell me more, tell me more
DOODY: Did she like your species?
GIRLS: Tell me more, tell me more
MARTY: Did he groom you for fleas?
ALL: Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, wo-oh-oh-oh-oh

LONGEST AND LEAST FUNNY PUN COMPETITION: THIRD PRIZE WINNER
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:54 AM on March 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


So, this'll sound really weird you guys, but the last couple of times this happened, I just MeMailed the people involved and asked them, and they told me.
posted by hincandenza at 4:12 PM on March 14, 2012


There's no way to do it otherwise from the client-side (short of searching for the URL of every post and comment you've ever made).

I just had the most diabolical idea.
posted by grobstein at 5:36 PM on March 14, 2012


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