Call me paranoid if you want to, but I've just added another spam-prevention preference to the Trackback plugin.

(Trackback spam? Fake trackbacks from sites that just want a link from your site to theirs even though the link has nothing to do with the message they "pinged." Spammers tend to hit older content, with the valid assumption that you're less likely to notice it but Google will see it.)

The new preference is labelled "Days to Allow Trackback Pings." The default is 60 days. This preference controls the amount of time that a message will accept trackback pings, starting with the message's creation date.

So, by default, your messages will accept pings for 60 days. You can change it to whatever you want.

Think of Trackback as a facilitator of conversation between weblogs (no pun intended). This preference lets you control how long you're willing to wait for people to comment on your part of the conversation.

(The new pref includes full help text.)

Seth