When I first established this blog, I pondered the whole comment question quite carefully. Most (ie: non-controversial) blogs simply have no worry about keeping spam at bay, but sites like these are of course, more prone to the ‘crazies’ and ‘trolls’.
On a side note about this problem – how many religious sites do you see being bombarded with atheist troll behaviour? I’d venture a guess at very few judging on what I’ve observed. Maybe it’s because atheists don’t feel the need to defend their (lack of) beliefs by engaging in personal attacks, disgusting language (and I’m no prude) and bad speling…
Anyway, back to comments.
I recently enabled a very clever plug-in (WP-PostRatings) and it got me thinking again about whether I should try enabling comments on here. I wasn’t too keen on moderating comments as then I’d be open to criticism that I was not allowing both sides of a topic to be discussed. The problem with allowing un-moderated comments on a site such as this though, is the likelihood of flaming by trolls. If I don’t allow comments at all though, I’d never benefit from insightful ideas and concepts that I others often leave in their comments on other blogs!
So – I’ve made a decision. I’ll implement comments soon – and yes, they will have to be moderated, but I’ll (hopefully) get some sensible arguments and rational (well, maybe that’s asking a bit much..) commenting from those that believe faith is important in their and other’s lives. I’ll keep you posted!
Well, that was easy to implement the changes! (that’s what I love about WordPress). Added a couple of spam protection plugins of course. Let’s see how it goes.