Spam comments have become a giant pain in the ass. Moveable Type — the platform I use here — has some basic antispam stuff, but I can’t seem to get it tuned right, so the only way I’ve found to keep the spam out is to have the filters set to “very aggressive” and sift through the spam queue every day or so for the ACTUAL comments. But they pile up QUICKLY.

I’ve been busy for a few days (hence no posts), for example, and now, after 6 days, I’ve just discovered over two thousand spam comments to zap.

What does this mean to you, the Heathen faithful? It means I’m restricting comments to authenticated users effective immediately. There are lots of auth systems I can piggyback on, and that you can use with very little effort. I hope you’ll do so. But I can’t keep up with the spam deluge.

MiscHeathen is also moving to a new platform sometime before Christmas. I was going to put off the comment login thing until then, but I just don’t have the time to deal with the flood. Henceforth, you’ll need to use an ID on one of the following systems in order to comment here:

• OpenID
• Google
• AIM
• WordPress.com
• TypePad

If this doesn’t work for you, please let me know via email. Thanks.