After reading this sad tale regarding comment spam, I thought that I hadn’t ever explained our comment policy here, and that I should.
First of all, I reserve the right to delete or edit any comment, though I will alert people to edited comments. I do promise to keep editing or deleting to a minimum, though. Spam is not tolerated. Discussions about unpleasant subjects (like sexuality or violence) should be done respectfully and without vulgarity.
Comments are basically wide-open for the first week. The only exception: certain words will trigger a spam filter, which will cause your comment to go into a moderation list for my approval. From your point of view, the comment will seem to disappear into the ether, and later magically appear in the post for no apparent reason (assuming it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d object to).
After the first week, all comments are moderated, not just comments with special words.
The restriction after the first week isn’t accidental. It seems that it takes that long for spammers to discover new posts to this blog and get around to post their garbage. If they don’t get here in time, the spam goes into the moderation queue, where it gets deleted before any of you have to see it. But it’s not indicative that I don’t want comments after the first week, nor that appropriate discussion of certain topics isn’t allowed. Just be patient.