Pitfalls of the Internet

Early yesterday evening, when I returned home after a Father’s Day celebration in Hamilton, I checked the status of my blog, as I do from time to time.  Under the comments section of the Saturday, June 15^th post concerning tenure charges, I found two links commonly known within the blogging community as ‘pingbacks.’

They were placed on The View from Bridgewater at noontime on Sunday.

When used appropriately, ‘pingbacks’ are a form of publicity by which an author of one blog site links up to another website with the intention of directing the attention of his/her readers back to the other website.
 

When I clicked on each of those ‘pingbacks,’ I discovered that the two blogs to which they refer are, in fact, the same ones published twice under different URL names. 

To my dismay, however, I also discovered that the author behind those two links had changed the title of my June 15^th post in an egregiously erroneous and seemingly malicious way, whether intentional or not.

I hope that not too many of you clicked on those links between the time that they were posted and the time that I removed them from this blog in the early hours of Sunday evening.

I am especially outraged at the author of those two web sites because of her sloppy work with the use of ‘pingbacks.’

Her two websites are Catholic in nature, and changing the byline title of my post in such a deceptive manner reflects badly on the Catholic tradition.  The world is full of knuckleheads, and that’s putting it mildly.

I regret any discomfort or outrage which any of you may have experienced if you clicked on those ‘pingbacks’ placed on The View from Bridgewater.

They have been removed, and their author has been blacklisted on this website.

The Internet can be a tricky place.  Thanks for reading.