I seem to have avoided the recent comment spam outbreak that infested a number of folks' sites, such as Teresa. Just lucky this time, but I will say this: If you're using Movable Type and you allow comments, but you haven't installed MT Blacklist, you're pretty much naked and defenseless out there unless you really know what you're doing. Seriously, run, don't walk, over to Jay Allen's MT Blacklist page and install it already.

Now then. Shelley is absolutely correct to note that a tool like this can only do so much and will sooner or later be defeated by the spammers. It's still a good enough solution for me for now, and it's surely better than nothing. I'm very un-thrilled about using the comment registration feature that's going to be in MT 3.0, but a feature or plugin that would allow me to require comments to be previewed before they're posted, as discussed in Teresa's comment thread, would be great. In addition to repelling spammers and allowing for a cooling-off moment, it would also ensure that people could catch their own HTML errors (such as not closing a HREF tag) before publishing. I preview just about all of my posts before publishing because of that.

As for closing comments on old threads, I'd prefer not to. Among other things, I'd miss out on the chance to be called a dumbass by local TV newscasters and other egosurfers. And isn't that what blogging is all about?