Account verification as a requisite for commenting has already been implemented and, let's face it, has not worked. Spam is still as prevalent in comments as ever.
My idea is that rather than use a traditional ban for comment spam, spamming users should be given a "ban on commentary"; depending on the severity of their spamming, they are not allowed to post comments for a certain amount of time (ranging from 1 day to a month). These "commentary bans" would be readily doled out by mods that judge a replicated, multi-posted comment by a user as spam, and/or would automatically trigger if a user posts the exact same message a certain number of times (perhaps with a warning after they've posted the same comment [apart from simple, commmon "real" comments] twice in a short period of time). |