Some software adjustments

I had to make a few software adjustments to the blog.  Lately a huge amount of spam is being submitted as comments to entries.  As a result I am tweaking some of the settings here to see if I can cut some of it off at the pass. 

However, it might have happened that some legitmate comments were eliminated when I was clearing out the dead wood to the burn pile (where the spammers themselves will also one day be consigned, I am sure).   Of course there were also comments I deleted simply because they were nasty.  Life is too short for both spam and nastygrams.

In any event, I turned on the option which asks people to be logged in in order to post comments.   I sure would prefer to have a bit more freedom, but the unsolicited garbage has become intolerable.  Someday I may know more about plugins or code tweaks which could help filter the gook out of the system, but until then, let’s try it this way.