Hello Erin,

Isn’t it a good idea to block all “open comments” permanently? Since almost all spam originates from anonymous users or “guest” who make a misuse of your hospitality rules it really seems unavoidable to make that decision.

When I initially read about the amount of time you spend with anonymous spam admissions in the comments section, it annoyed me. I really think it is time to seriously tackle this problem, your recent experience only confirms this.

Erin, one of the reasons you started this site was that you wanted to reduce the time you spend with editing and publishing stories. Implementing this “author self-services” is a success and I think you were happy with the time you gained and could spend on other important things.

If blocking open comments saves you a lot of time because it seems to blocks these “sick contributions”, I strongly suggest to make it permanent.

Nobody will blame you for doing it but making that decision influences the setup of the site.

Sugested changes in the setup of the site:

About leaving content, there are now two “sticky” items and also two “primary links” and a “Navigation” item that suggest to the “guests” that they can leave content, nowhere is explicitly mentioned that now you first need to register first. If you now click all the content related links as a “guest” you only encounter “Access denied”
Accessing the “FAQ” or “any sort of about section” to get more info isn’t yet possible because they don’t seem to exist.

I suggest a clean up of the frontpage.
• Edit the “primary” FAQ link, it now point to ../node/471, it should point to ../taxonomy/term/230
• Remove the two primary links about adding content, they are not usable for “guests” and therefore confusing
• Edit (or remove) the two “sticky” comment/content items on the frontpage.
• And last but not least, start filling up the fact or FAQ pages.

Don’t look at my suggestions as critique, I want to help you in improving your site

Hugs

Astrid