Close Comments to Reduce Spam
One of the banes of blogging is spam comments. Nearly every blogger gets them. One way to reduce comment spam is to turn off accepting comments on older posts. Each blog host will have a different way to do this…if it is possible. Check with your host to see how.
Generally trackbacks are a nuisance since they do not require a login to implement. The poor moderator or comment filter must decide whether these are legitimate or not.
Since shutting off accepting comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks before a specific date is not built-in, WordPress has a comment timeout plug-in that does the job.
Doug