For some time, anyone has been able to post comments without the need to register as a user. Comments did not appear immediately so that I could review comments for spam. That has worked reasonably well for about a year, but the spambot attacks have become a severe problem. Spammers use scripts that roam the Internet, looking for sites that allow comments, and when they find one, they run scripts that know how to post a comment in a form.
Spam has been increasing slowly but steadily on this site, but over the past few weeks, it has become relentless. Just over one night in the last week, more than 400 spam messages were posted, and those have to be deleted. Even with good site management tools, it takes too much time.
So I am going to try something new. There is now a user login block on the right hand side of the page. You can create a user account, and once you get an email from the site with your userid and password, you can post comments freely (the email typically arrives within a minute or two).
We will see if this works. One advantage is that I will be able to let my readers post and see their comments immediately. As always, we will never, ever resell or redistribute your email address. We may occasionally send a note to you about site administration or other issues.
Thanks for your patience.
Andrew