Are arXiv.org trackbacks a dead end?
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007More than two years ago, arXiv.org implemented trackbacks. In theory this is a clever way to allow the community to post comments on papers; a commenter would write a blog entry with a link to the paper that they wanted to comment on, and the trackback system would create a complementary link on the paper’s website to the comment. To reduce exposure to trackback spam, there is some sort of moderation system in place.
However, it seems that this hasn’t caught on. The early suggestion was that it would, once researchers started blogging (with standard blog software that supports trackbacks). Researchers would be enticed to blog because of arxiv.org’s support of trackbacks.
Whether or not researchers have embraced blogging technology en masse is an open question. However, there are cultural assumptions that went into the trackback standard that make it really inappropriate for the letters-to-the-editor usage desired of it. First, trackbacks are merely a statement that the blog entry has something to do with the link. I could say that Ron Maimon is a friend of mine and wrote http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0503028, aren’t I proud of him? This is not a scientific commentary on the paper. Secondly, the blog entries appear on the blogger’s site; a technical discussion of esoterica in a particular paper might not be what the blogger wants on their blog. On a similar note, letters-to-the-editor are threaded; comments on an arxiv.org paper appear out of context on many different websites. Comments on the blog entry, a rational response, would exist out of the timeline of the original commentary. Finally, discussions of the process of critiquing scientific wikipedia entries have led me to believe that researchers desire a collaborative effort on commentary, especially when widely-held views are at odds with the paper.
