Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[tom poe <tompoe AT amihost.com>]

Hello, All:  I've been wrestling with the question of comments posting
on SONG STORM.  I'll average four hours or more a week, cleaning up the
scum.  Two days ago, I had to spend over four hours, alone, on one scum
rush, because the servers at Ibiblio.org were really heavily trafficked
during the time I had available to do it.  I came across this post in
researching options:

Comments for articles disabled due to abuse
Posted by joerg on Friday, November 05 @ 15:44:09 UTC (86 reads)
About freedb.org We noticed that the comments-system, that allows users
to make comments to articles posted on our website, was being misused
extensively. Spam-comments were being added to older articles -
apparently automatically by some scripted bots. Since those abusive
comments contained lots of links to strange sites, we suspect that the
intention was to use freedb's high ranking in search engines to promote
those sites.

freedb does not have the ressources to check the comments regularly and
delete such spam-comments. Therefore we have no other choice than to
disable the comments system. If you want to comment on an article on our
website, please use the forum from now on. 
[END QUOTE] - - -

As you know, we've had pretty good luck with getting SONG STORM as
number one search result for our artists, songs, venues, etc.  I wonder
if we aren't suffering the same fate as freedb.org?

We have a Forum up, at:
http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/php/phpBB2/ 
that we could use.  I can spend time and set the Forum up with better
colors and possibly activate neat features.  The downside is, it seems
like a real pain to register and use the Forum the first time.  Once one
gets signed up, though, and posts a topic, or replies to a topic, they
can work from their email for further activity on that topic.

So, anyone have thoughts on which Forum we use, or what we should do for
options?  I hate scum, and I hate scummers (my name for spam/spammers). 
On a sidenote.  Notice that nonprofits that want to mass email for
exposure and announcements are now prevented from participating in this
form of communication.  A great tool for the Internet, lost to those who
might benefit most from it.  I have had abusive responses from email
lists, since my post was general, and not specific.  It seems there are
always some list members on every list that resent promotional material,
regardless of content.  Wish I could figure out nifty ways to get around
that.  Any ideas welcome.
Happy Holidays,
Tom