So, if I understand Chris correctly, the main complaint with Trackback, compared to Pingback, is a complaint with a particular implementation of it, not necessarily with the concept itself. As far as I can tell, MT does the two things that Chris says that Trackback does not do. Viz, ping URLs which are just mentioned (linked to) in the body of the article, and be able to ping more than one URL with a single article. At least, that’s certainly the way that I understood it when I was setting configuration variables.

What I find irritating is that there are two incompatible ways to do this VERY simple thing, ensuring that no matter which one I choose, I can never be sure that my pings will be acknowledged.

Then again, that’s the nice thing about standards …