Ms. Barber has the right idea. The ecosystem is designed to give folks an idea of what is going on out in the blogosphere, and open trackbacks introduce distorting effects. Do I benefit from a bit of that distortion? Probably. I will continue to post some of my bloggings to open posts to increase visibility and get people to see my blog that they may not ordinarily view. However, most of my trackbacks are to relevant posts elsewhere, and not to open trackbacks - I simply don't have time to do open trackbacks in large numbers.
I'm also taking the time to visit smaller blogs, to increase their visibility: just because a particular blog has no visibility doesn't mean that what that blog covers isn't important or relevant. Blogs can come out of nowhere to be prominent because of a crisis, or a voice touches a nerve with the ecosystem.
The practical effect of the changes on my own blog has been a drastic drop in my rankings, from 780 or so down to 1,991. I'm sure that will change frequently (there's also a Turkey Day dropoff involved here as well).
One has to wonder just how the ecosystem takes the trackbacks from an open post and differentiates them from other blog postings, as I'm sure that there is considerable overlap.
Others noting the change in the ecosystem (and updated regularly:
Choose life, who will continue with open trackbacks despite the fact that they're not going to be counted.
Don Surber was not a happy camper, though his ranking slide wasn't nearly as bad.
Ray CHOW wonders about trackback hacking and trackback policies.
Myopic Zeal weighs in on NZ Bear's policy to remove inline trackbacks from the rankings.
Real Ugly American doesn't like it.
Aaron's not too worried about it, even if it results in a hit on his status in the ecosystem.
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