meta: comments now require sign-in

This blog's comments have always been hugely valuable, and some magnificent conversations have occurred in comment strings.  I hate having to restrict them in any way (apart from the comment policy).  

Sadly, this blog is now experiencing a comment-spam attack, and the "captcha" tool for verifying commenters appears to be useless.  Our host, TypePad, can offer little assistance, and now and then makes things worse.

So two changes:

  • Comments have been closed on some older posts that were attracting heavy spam. 
  • As of now you will have to register via any of a range of online identities, including Twitter, Facebook, and so on to comment.

If that doesn't work, we will probably begin (with regret) closing comments on all but the most recent posts.

Please keep commenting!  Your comments have always been at least half the value of this blog.

3 Responses to meta: comments now require sign-in

  1. Jarrett at HumanTransit.org November 9, 2013 at 8:10 pm #

    So for example, this is Jarrett, signed in via Twitter. See? Not hard.

  2. James Sinclair November 11, 2013 at 7:50 pm #

    My blog has also been under and endless siege. And its on blgoger, which is google, so youd assume if anyone got their spam shit together it would be them…

  3. Miles Bader November 12, 2013 at 5:31 pm #

    I’ll note that TypePad’s use of Google / Twitter login is pretty scary.
    It asks for permission to do things like modify your profile, add followers, posts updates, etc. There is no good reason for it to do so, and reputable sites do not (typically all they require is to be able to see your identity).
    Is this something you can control, or is it a problem with TypePad itself?
    [I eventually managed to sign in using OpenID, but it took me a long time to figure out how to do this…]