I've always been a great believer in encouraging discussions on my stories by allowing free access to anyone who wants to post. The downside of that has always been that the link spammers can get through too, and more and more frequently they seem to have exploits that bypass any of the controls we have installed to deter them. Over the last week my server has crashed almost nightly due to the concentrated frenzy of link spam posts all over my site. While the server usually reboots on its own, the comment-posting engine itself does not always do so without human intervention, meaning posting by anyone can be impossible for hours on end.

So if we're to have any reader comments at all, it seems we have little choice but to see what happens if we restrict posting to those with log-ins. I'm not sure yet if it's actually going to solve the problem, and if it doesn't make for a significant improvement, we'll reinstitute anonymous posting and look for another solution.

And let me just emphasize to those who think creating a log-in account will somehow compromise their privacy that all it takes to create an account is a working e-mail address. Your e-mail address is used only for confirming your registration and sending your password, and the e-mail addresses and passwords remain on my server and are not provided to InfoWorld or anyone else for any other purpose.

Plus, there are some advantages to having everyone who participates in a discussion use a distinct log-in. It makes for better threaded dialogues when you can tell one reader's comment from another and provides a better sense of an online community. Once you're logged in, it also makes it much easier for you to see new comments in different conversations on my site without having to read through comments you've read before.

So I hope those of you who have been posting anonymously on my site will consider creating a log-in while we run this experiment. It's a simple procedure to create a log-in on my site. Just go to my sign-up page and enter your desired username and email address in the respective fields. An autogenerated password will be sent to you in an email with which you can log on and change your password to whatever you like.

Like I said, I don't know yet if this is going to be the solution. But it's worth a try to see if we can keep the spammers from beating us, don't you think? As always, I invite you to post your comments below, or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.