Okay, kids, here’s the scoop: since the upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 about twelve days ago, I’ve had very little spam activity, and the small amount of crap that did come in was handled quite efficiently by MT’s filtering protocol, which means I haven’t given the matter a lot of thought. This morning, however, the filter let me down, and I got hit with some 50 junk comments in a little under an hour. Rather than let it stack up and become totally unwieldy, I shut down the comments feature while I did some research on what I can do to stop this nuisance once and for all.

As I mentioned a while back, the most secure option would require anyone who comments here to register with an authentication service called TypeKey. This is a third-party organization with which you create an identity and prove yourself to be a human being (easier than you might think for us genuine humans, but bloody difficult for software masquerading as a person), and then you can use this identity to log in to blogs and other Websites that require this form of authentication.
TypeKey authentication would give me lots of control over what happens around here, but I fear it might also discourage some people from commenting, and I don’t want to do that. I know some of my readers aren’t especially tech-savvy or involved in the online world, and I can see how it could be off-putting to be forced into signing up for something that might have limited usefulness for you. My concern is that, if this is the only TypeKey-restricted blog you visit, you might choose to simply stop commenting here rather than register. Or you might stop visiting altogether. So before I do anything drastic, I’m going to ask anyone who regularly comments here — and even anyone who may be lurking out there but thinks they might commment someday — to give me some feedback now. What do you think about this TypeKey idea? Would it be a pain or make you uncomfortable to have to register for this service? Leave your thoughts below, please.

In the meantime, I’ve cranked up the sensitivity of the Movable Type spam filter and set the system to hold all comments for moderation before they publish. Maybe this will turn out to be enough anti-spam protection and I won’t have to go to the TypeKey option, but I’d still like to know what y’all think…