Internet spammers have very recently discovered blogs as a new place to spew their garbage. The numbers are increasing fast enough that it's finally reached the point where I simply can't keep up with them all manually.
Adding this feature means that WCF readers leaving comments will be required to complete a word verification step, before actually entering comments. The entry screen looks like this:
What this does is prevent automated systems from adding comments to WCF, since it takes a human being to read the word and pass this step. If you've ever seen a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you've encountered comment spam. A lot of this is done automatically by software which can't pass the word verification, so enabling this option is a good way to prevent many such unwanted comments.
Sorry about the hassle. I'm going to try it for a while to see whether it does what it's supposed to do. Please don't hesitate to let me know if this presents an unnecessary obstacle to participating in this board.
Thanks for your patience and continuing support O gentle readers.
