Comments settings for all blogs

I’ve made a number of changes on the Comments settings across all blogs. The most significant change has been to the setting “Who Can Comment?” which is now set to “Anyone – includes Anonymous Users”. I’ve always suspected I might be discouraging comments by using the “Registered Users – includes OpenID” option, as this obviously doesn’t allow for anonymous comments.

I hope I’m not opening myself up to a barrage of spam and hate mail. I do still have the following safeguards in place though:

Comment moderation: Always
Show word verification for comments? (CAPTCHA)

I’m also trying out “Comment Form Placement” as a “Pop-up window” instead of “Full page”.