I've gotten some great anonymous comments over the years; I still get about one per month. Thus, it is with great sadness I inform you that I am shutting off anonymous comments, at least for now…
I'm up to several anonymous spam comments per day. I tried tightening the CAPTCHAs, but that didn't seem to help. Either it's humans solving the CAPTCHAs, or there's a Drupal or CAPTCHA module bug. Regardless, I've lost patience with doing daily manual cleanup of my comment spam. Until I can figure out some automated way to deal with it, I'm going to close the whole business.
If you want to comment on FOB, you basically have two choices: you can sign up for an account, or you can email me. If you do the former, I would strongly recommend you do the latter also. At the very least, provide full information in your account application, including your full name, an email address, and a coherent rationale for requesting an account. The last thing I need is spammers with valid accounts on my site. If you want to email me, it's an open secret that I am Bart Massey, a Portland State University professor.
I'm sorry about all this. Spammers are one of my least favorite category of criminals in the whole world. Their massive degradation of the web disproportionately affects hobby sites like FOB that cannot afford to pay professionals to deal with the problem on a continuous basis. This is one force driving the web to look more and more like television over time. Thanks for breaking it, jerks. (B)