If anyone was on the site today between 2:30 and 8:00 PM EST, you were likely greeted with a few hundred random comments whose authors linked to some pretty repulsive sites. Movable Type made the cleanup an excrutiating process:

# Find the latest comments listed in the blog editing menu
# Click them to find out where they were left
# Click on the parent blog entry
# Tag any other offending comments for deletion
# Close comments for that entry
# Save, rebuild, wash, rinse, repeat

There were over 200 comments for which I needed to repeat this scenario. Thankfully, some SQL came in handy. Closing comments for the whole site was as easy as UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_comments = "2";. But, still–that was half an hour of my life wasted deleting comments (and now another half hour wasted writing about it).

Ironic that this should occur so close to Jeffrey Zeldman‘s recent affirmation of basic human goodness. That, and my consideration of setting up comments for the links.

WordPress already has features that help comment administration–including moderator approval–which I’d like to implement after switching (an event that is no longer an if). In the meantime, comments will only be open on the five-or-so most recent entries.