Just so there’s a record of it, here’s how I’m planning to implement comments in the new blog platform.  It’s geared toward a small community size.

You will not be required to create a user account or login to post comments, however, registering an account will be the only way to “reserve” a name or display a web site link with your comment.  In other words, you won’t be allowed to post comments with a name that’s already in use by a registered account.

The idea is to allow people who want to control their name to do so, but at the same time allow pseudo-anonymous comments.  I say “pseudo” because IP addresses will be logged in all cases as a deterrent against blatant mischievousness.

If you don’t enter a name when posting a comment, it will be shown as Anonymous.

You will be able to (optionally) provide an email address if you ever want to reset your password.  (Passwords are stored as one-way encrypted hashes, so it is impossible to retrieve them – they can only be reset.)  I have no desire to do anything else with email addresses.

You will also be able to provide a web site link if you want to promote your web page by putting it on my site (which is sure to receive tens of hits per day).

Everything except the username is stored in the database as encrypted text, if that’s something you care about.  That means if someone at my web host decides to copy my database, they won’t get very much.

Javascript will be required to post comments.  It seems to be a really easy way to block automated spam bots without hassling the user with captchas.  Since I implemented Javascript I’ve had 100% success blocking spam from my blog.  (Admittedly, my page doesn’t come under direct assault very much.)

There will be a relatively short limit (say, 1000 characters) on comments to encourage brevity.  I never like finding comments on sites that are longer than the original post.  At this point, I don’t think I’ll be allowing any HTML or markup.  It’s just too much of a hassle.

I don’t plan to support avatars, although it would be relatively straightforward to add in the future.  Of course, you’d need an account to use that feature.

I also don’t see any need to support OpenID or Gravatars unless the community size grows considerably.  I might explore OpenID someday, though, just for the practice.