My blog is under a full-scale attack by spammers, at unprecedented levels. As a result I've had to turn off allowing unregistered comments, at least for a little while. I'm hoping that if it's off, the spamming will stop. Or at any rate, I can't let them accumulate faster than I can delete them and block their IPs. Given that turning it on for barely 5 minutes resulted in 27 new comments, I shudder to think how many would accumulate if I were offline for more than an hour (which sometimes happens, like when I sleep and stuff).
I'm hoping it will soon blow over, but in the meantime I've done this and I'm turning off comments on more old posts. Except for closed posts, though, you can still comment -- as long as you register. The problem: I'm not quite sure how you register. I think there's a way you can register on my site if you want to comment, but I haven't quite figured out how. You can also use a TypeKey login, but I think I need to tweak my settings to make that work and I'm not quite sure how to do that either.
One way or another, though, I'll do something (as soon as I get the chance). I like having people comment. But it may be a little hit or miss for a bit until I get this worked out. $#*%$ spammers...
Edit 8/4/05: A compromise on comments... You can post annonymously and unregistered-ly, but they won't show up right away. I'll have to approve them and then they'll show up. I plan to approve everything that's not a spam, though, as a matter of course, and HOPEFULLY this will be temporary and I'll be able to turn them back on completely. But in the meantime this seems like a reasonable middleground.
The last attack at least seems to have abated, and perhaps this change is why.