On my blog, I’ve not been closing comments on old posts *until* they get spambot problems and that has worked so far. I would have missed some interesting new developments on topics I wrote about long ago if I’d closed comments automatically.

I prefer to tell people up-front right before the comment box that comments are premoderated and outline the policy, but that’s been appearing and disappearing from my own blog recently, due to various upgrades by other authors on the same system who don’t think that’s as important as I do.

One observation is that, as with many newspaper fora, the conversation seems to be dominated by a couple of voices. It annoys me (as a former director) that one of those voices clearly has an axe to grind, and has ignored the offer of having a personal conversation.

That being said my second observation is how respectful the library staff has been in the conversation. (But I will add that I am not surprised since I know [and respect] both David and Rob Banks.)

It takes courage to address the issue this way. Congratulations on being a role model for our institutions.

Second, the time filter is a good thing – six weeks to two months would be as long as I’d leave them open.

Third, start building or researching a banned domain list. You can do the obvious – ban country-specific domains (North Korea, China, and several of the former Soviet states are a good start), but you’ll have more to add.

Lastly, no policy will handle every situation, and the best thing I ever did in dealing with this was to form a roundtable to discuss the more “out there” problems and how to handle them. On questionable posts, I had all the members review the post and vote before removal. It was a bit more time-intensive, but it helped to get beyond individual personalities and emotional responses.