Adam Atlas is modifying phpBB to support trackback:

Eventually, other TrackBack-compatible programs will be able to ping posts on phpBB forums with this mod, phpBBs with this mod will be able to ping other TrackBack-compatible programs, posts on phpBBs with this mod will be able to ping other posts on the same forum, and posts on phpBBs with this mod will be able to ping posts on other phpBBs with this mod.

Adam, I’m curious how you went about this. Let’s exchange code and publish the merged result? What’s missing on my side is only autodiscovering trackback ping URLs for post that I’m referring to.

In related posts, Tom Coates at Plastic Bag is campaigning for trackback autodiscovery. I’m amazed how many Movable Type weblogs don’t have this turned on; trackback is certainly a hard feature to grasp, even though MT does make it quite easy.

Tom also has a great article, the excesses of social software, where he says (among many other things):

But there’s something about the abandonment of concepts of ‘online community’ and the complete rejection of familiar terms and paradigms like the message board that worries me. There seems to be a bizarre lack of history to the whole enterprise – a desire to claim a territory as unexplored when it’s patently not. And more importantly a remarkable lack of implementation and experiment around the place

I must agree. I’ve been following the development of bulletin boards like phpBB, and of weblog software, and it’s interesting how they proceed to discover similar things in (mostly) complete isolation. For instance, the whole trackbacks are comments movement is an attempt to make weblogs more like bulletin-boards. On the other hand, phpBB hackers are now discovering that it would be nice to respond to trackbacks, to offer RSS feeds, and do other things that weblog software is doing.

Certainly I don’t advocate a complete merger here, but as I need (admittedly simplified) forums to support my shareware users, and I also need a weblog, this convergence is only natural for me.