Not a terribly interesting post, but I've updated the way comments are handled on this website. Namely, I now require that commenters enter a painfully obvious pass phrase to block the robots that are out there (hint: it's my last name). If you end up getting an error when commenting, please let me know.
As far as my comment policy goes, I generally allow any comments that seem to have something to do with the article at hand. With this new capability, I may be able to turn off automatic moderation and let comments flow through. For now, I will continue moderating comment from "unknown" people -- unknown being defined as people who aren't using TypeKey to authenticate themselves.
The pass phrase capability is created with John Wiseman's HMPassPhrase plugin for Movable Type. It replicates a capability that was mysteriously removed from MT in the upgrade to 3.2.