Comments
Last week, the spambots hit my blog in force. Thousands of spam comments in a short period; enough of a load on the server that Pair (my web host) automatically shut off access to my blog's database. The nice Pair tech support guy re-enabled access, but before I could get into the system to turn off commenting, the bots slammed it again.
Eventually I got access for long enough to turn off comments; then I deleted the 300MB or so worth of spam comments (I didn't even look at them, just deleted them all).
I decided to leave comments disabled for a couple days. And then I didn't get a chance to revisit that until tonight.
Tonight, I re-enabled comments, and immediately three spam comments slipped through my spam filter. These are the anonymous spam that's been getting past my filter a lot lately, and I'm tired of having to delete them.
So I've changed my settings: all unauthenticated comments now automatically go to moderation.
I'm sorry about that; I've always liked allowing anonymous and otherwise unauthenticated comments. But for the duration of the current batch of spam, I don't think I'm up for allowing them without moderation. And I may have to turn off comments again altogether if I get hit by another DoS attack. (I don't think anyone's intentionally trying to DoS my blog, but the effect is the same regardless of intent.)
So if you end up unable to comment here, I apologize. Most people who comment on my blog are doing so on Facebook these days anyway, but I'll be sad if I end up unable to allow comments here on my site. But we can burn that bridge when we come to it.