NZ Bear, TTLB, Open Trackback festivals, the future of TFM and who's the leaker?

There is a small disturbance brewing in the blogosphere at this moment. It may have started when Don Surber had the following email exchange with NZ Bear at TTLB.

Dear NZ Bear:My understanding is your new spam filters mean linkfests no longer count as links. That is most unfortunate and discouraging to startup blogs. Thank you, Don SurberPoca WV

Don: That's basically true. I haven't announced anything as yet as I'm still working out the system, but the goal is to not count 'open trackbacks' and the like towards rankings or identification of top posts.I'll explain my reasoning more when I post about it. Given that I haven't done so yet... where did you hear about the change?NZ

Hey, it is your site. You do what you want. You are stifling startup blogs though. We are not stupid. We figure these things out. Thank you. Don

First questions, who's the leaker and when will the grand jury investigation start?

Alot of people are unhappy with what NZ Bear is proposing to do. But go read Holly Aho's post. She makes some valid points. Do any of the open Trackback people have something better to propose?

I guess some people are gaming the system either out of some ego boost they'll get from being a big shot in the TLLB or so they can get more blogad revenue. I've done my share of open trackbacks to other blogs and run a few festivals of my own. Still where do I rank in the TLLB?


Inbound Unique: 197
Current Status: Large Mammal
Average Daily Visits: 136
Current Rank: #918

Wow I get 136 visitors a day and a 10% chunk of those are me. My daily visitors average is about what it should be, there has been a slight upward spike of late. As to my links, there are about 20-25 blogs who blogroll me. That isn't a hell of alot.

My open trackbacks to Political Teen and Mudville Gazette(where I normally link with my knucklehead winner) have been the best for bringing me traffic though as you can see it hasn't done all that much. The only times I've ever had huge traffic(500+ posts in a day) were when Captains Quarters and Michelle Malkin linked to me in a blog post. Thanks Ed and Michelle.

TFM is a small blog with no big aspirations. I'd love to have thousands of visitors a day, I'd settle for 500 to be honest. I'm not articulate enough in my views to ever do much more than that. All I am is a high school graduate with a little college background, former serviceman(Navy), father, husband and a few other things. I'm even a knucklehead sometimes.

Maybe its time I fold up my TFM tent and do something more productive. I guess not too many people are interested in knucklehead awards, Florida issues and ramblings on golf. Six months here at TFM and I really don't have much to show for it. If NZ Bear does his proposed changes, I guess my traffic will get even lighter as OTB festivals become a thing of the past. I'll soon be left talking to myself. All that may keep me going i s I've klind of gotten hooked on blogging. I've also made a few friends out there, Kobayashi Maru, John, and Greta to name a few. I don't have many friends.

I guess what I'm trying to say is does all of this really matter. If you like blogging, you'll blog. If it gets tiresome after a while, you'll quit. Does your ranking in the TTLB really influence why you blog? Stepping out on a limb, I'll say it shouldn't though I guess it does matter to some.

I'll keep posting and writing in the meantime. Many writers say they write for one audience, their most important one. Who is that?

Themselves.

Open Post- Don Surber, Jo's Cafe, Political Teen

Update- The Bear has responded. I thought they hibernate this time of the year.

So this weekend, I decided to do something about it. I implemented a simple solution: when the Ecosystem scans a blog's front page for links, it now simply ignores any inline trackback sections that are found, while still counting the links within posts or on a blog's blogroll.

As I pointed out to Bear his response is flawed.

1- It penalizes posts to blogs with inline trackbacks are honestly related to one another. I do around five a week to Poliblog and Outside the Beltway.

2- People like myself and Don Surber who add URLS manually still will get counted.

Adam also notes that open trackbacks can still be done manually circumventing Bear's changes. He has just created more work for himself and bloggers.

Give it up Bear. I really think you've done more harm than good.