Link Backs - In English?

Hi guys,

I have gone into my vB admin and gone to the Link Backs area. I have a list if link backs that I have to Validate, Ignor or Delete.

Could someone on here be so kind as to explain to me what link backs can do for my board aswell as what the above three options are for.

Please talk to me as if I were a child as I really dont understand what link backs are and how they work.

Thank you, in advance, for your time.

LinkBacks (Trackbacks, Pingbacks and Refbacks) allow you to notify another site that you wrote something related to what is written on a specific page. This improves the chances of contributors to this page noticing that you gave them credit for something, or that you improved upon something they wrote. With LinkBacks, websites are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgments and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a textbook.
Linkbacks have long been a major force in the development of the blogging network, by creating an interconnected series of blogs and posts acknowledging one another. Not only does this improve the general community ethos throughout the "blog-o-sphere", but it also helps to make blogs into more powerful link-building tools.
Note: Links built via this method are highly relevant and do not carry the disadvantages typically associated with "link farms" or "link exchanges".
The LinkBack principle has migrated from blogs to other publishing platforms such as news content management systems and forums.

That is the description from from the 'linkback' dropdown.

They are basically links from other sites that have linked to your site from a posting that you had on your site.

I usually ignore/delete them all because you could get a lot of link backs from spam sites dropping your sites value. If you read around the site here you would see that some other people here would say the same thing.

Thank you Kevin. Very helpful. Think I will just do as you said and remove them. :-)

I havent look into these till now.

I have 2 problems:

The page where I moderate them is so big (a couple of years old) and I have to wait 5-10 minutes to save settings (or sometimes the browser will get an error). Any tips?

I also approved one but i cannot see it under the thread.

Cheers