This (often quoted)
Disenchanted article talks about linking back to referers as a way to build a smarter web.
But the web of linkback links has some real logical traps that greatly dilute the information these links can carry about relevance.
Linkback links are not smart, they're democratic. At worst, they may show which page fooled the most people into clicking on the link to your site. At best, they'll still highlight older and more well travelled links over newer and possibly more relevant ones.
Linkback links also assume that relevance is two-way which is certainly untrue in some cases. For example, links to reference material may often be more relevant than the backlink they generate.
The article suggests that there should be a simple way for web surfers to specify a list of relevant resources for use by other visitors to the same page.
I submit that by publishing a weblog entries as annotations, one can create such a tool. (
see my weblog as annotea annotations) I can post weblog entries that talk about related websites, and any time someone visits any of the sites, my weblog entry will appear as an annotation. Surfers have the option to subscribe to my weblog as well as (hopefully in the future) the weblog of anyone else whose opinion they value.
Dated: 10/11/2002