Despite the best intentions of my blogging software, my database tables were filled with crap from spammers. Trackbacks were especially bad. Since I only got one trackback in all the time I've had this blog, I've blown them all away and disabled them. If you want to leave me a trackback you can't. Blame the spammers, They've won.
How do other people with hugely popular blogs handle this crap?
There are two resources you may find helpful in how you might tweak your system to fight trackback spam. Although these don't help detect legitimate trackbacks or not, they do alleviate the burden placed on a system during a trackback storm:
http://www.lifewiki.net/sixapart/MTArchitectures
http://www.lifewiki.net/sixapart/MTPerformanceTuning
And especially the RebuildQueue plugin:
http://code.sixapart.com/svn/mtplugins/trunk/RebuildQueue/