I’d put comments first, because my objective is to build a community around the blog, and I value faithful visitors and their opinions more than other bloggers who quote my post, even though I realise this is also important.

Now, for news blogs and blogs were the objective is more centered on spreading information to new people who might want to go deeper into the content rather than building a community around it, I guess posting trackbacks first is a better option.

The thing is that comments and trackbacks serve different purposes. With a comment, you’re taking part in an ongoing discussion about the core topic of the post, and there’s much more of an impetus to stay on-topic. With trackbacks, you’re creating a fork of the discussion on your own blog, which targets a different audience and very often completely flies off at a tangent.

Would it make sense to put trackbacks in the sidebar? Comments can then follow the post, and trackbacks are still available.

It’s a simple solution and doesn’t require fancy javascripts, and you know what they say about simple solutions.