Moderate All Trackbacks/Pingbacks

[X-Maj]

Please allow trackbacks and pingbacks to be moderated separately from comments.

I don't want my website visitors to see trackbacks/pingbacks before i do. The notion that viewing my website could cause them to waste time even looking at spam irritates me.

I don't understand why this isn't a standard feature. Maybe nobody has made the argument that it's essential? If that's the case, i'll give it a shot.

1) Nobody likes it when trackbacks/pingbacks show up in the Recent Comments widget. Not even legitimate pings. In some cases, this makes the widget utterly useless.

2) Trackbacks/pingbacks don't require user registration, so they can't be controlled by the "previously approved comment" option. That makes them more vulnerable to spammer abuse.

3) Some administrators would benefit from enabling trackback/pingback moderation and leaving them in the queue instead of disabling them entirely. For instance, trackbacks/pingbacks can be a useful for monitoring inbound link activity.

The bottom line is this:

Moderating all trackbacks/pingbacks improves the blog visitor experience by reducing the spam they're likely to see.

Moderating all comments degrades the blog visitor experience by slowing down their discussions and making them less likely to continue posting comments.

Please don't lump them together. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[nacin]

Plugin material.