It seems like part of this post is missing. We were discussing the usefulness of update services (weblogs.com, blo.gs, etc, which are all pinged by ping-o-matic (ping-a-ling, in this sense)). Pinging update services is not a bad thing at all. Though it increases your risk of being comment spammed, any viable anti-spam measure will help you counteract such things. The original poster was paranoid and concerned about the fact that he had send a ping to ping-o-matic (thus pinging weblogs.com, blo.gs, etc) and wondering if he could be removed from them. Unfortunately, once you’ve made your presence known on weblogs.com, blo.gs, etc, there is no turning back, and spam bots will forever follow the link But, as I said, all you need is a good anti-spam measure. Even WP’s default blacklist will do just fine. It’s not worth it disable update services (a valuable tool for blog publicity and your readers who don’t read your RSS feed, but prefer to receive updates via email).
https://tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/spam/
