I was reading this interesting blog post on InsideFacebook.com about how a guy wrote a popular Facebook app and is now suffering because he is getting more users then his systems know how to handle.
I was going to join the conversation and leave my 2 cents but before you can leave a comment you have to register. I just don’t care enough go through the hassle and time it takes to register. I’m just not going to leave my comment.
I have been seeing this more and more on blogs. They make you register before you leave a comment.
I understand that this is a technique to stop comment spammers. I run multiple blogs. I know how much a pain comment spam can be but forcing a user to register is too big of a barrier to entry. It kills the conversation and the community.
I want to be able to just drop in my comment and leave. I don’t want to have to think about it.
Am I being harsh? If not, what alternative methods do you guys use to stop comment spam?
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
I don’t think that’s harsh. It’d be easier to switch on moderation or keyword moderation for each comment rather than have the pallava of registration and authentication codes for commentors. I have certain keywords tagged to go to moderation only and some email domains (sorry hotmail users) flagged for moderation too and that seems to work well for me so far.
Here’s the reason I don’t have to enable registration:
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/software/bad-behavior/
The combination of these two stop 99.9% of my comment spams. See the footer at the bottom of my website to see how many spams SK2 stops. I get spammed quite a bit.