I've turned on one of Typepad's new comment management features, the comment queue. It holds all comments for approval before posting to the public weblog. I'll try it out for a week; in return, I'll leave comments open for all posts and see how things go. Typepad added quite a few upgrades in the current batch of modifications: bandwidth and storage capacity has been doubled for all accounts; better template design tools were added; instant messaging can now be added to the sidebar content (I might take a whack at this one next week); and other comment management features (editing, IP banning) have been made much more accessible.
Go ahead and post a comment here to test out the delayed comment feature. As with all new features, response times may be a bit slow at first. I'll get to the queue at least once a day.
Definitely a step in a direction... Better than no comments, worse than live comments. Except I imagine that, as a high-profile Mormon site, you must be the lightning rod for the crazies. But I hope you can find a balance that maintains some of the public-discussion aspect of your site!
Posted by: RoastedTomatoes | Jul 06, 2005 at 04:15 PM
I'm glad. I won't have to start that pathetic echoblog.
Posted by: Ann | Jul 06, 2005 at 06:45 PM
Flip-flopper.
Posted by: J. Stapley | Jul 06, 2005 at 06:51 PM
Convert to WordPress and have it do all the spam work for you.
My design blog used to get hundreds of spam every day or so. Now, most of it is automatically deleted, and the stuff that falls through is for the most part put into a moderation queue.
Posted by: Kim Siever | Jul 06, 2005 at 10:08 PM