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Appalbarry writes:

Off and on for several years I've been part of a local political forum using Blogger.

Usually a new topic will be posted every week, and group of thirty or forty enthusiastic people will generate fifty to a hundred comments.

The challenge is that we're overwhelmed by Anons, who go off wildly in all directions, dwell endlessly on personal vendettas, and lately get far too close to outright libel of other people. Consensus in the past has been that allowing Anons is good thing, but we're realizing that we really need to be able to moderate their comments.

What we really want is something simple enough for non-experts, not needing our own hosting, that will allow us to:

1. Post topics for discussion
2. Let "named" posters comment without a delay for moderation.
3. Allow Anon comments but hold them for moderation.

The good thing about Blogger is that it doesn't seem to get blasted with comment spam, as seems to be the case with WordPress blogs for instance. The bad thing is that your only choice with Anons is either all-in, or all-out. Either you cut them out entirely, or you give them full rein to wreak havok.

We'd appreciate being pointed to something similar to Blogger, but just a little bit more featured, and not part some large environment like Google Groups or Facebook. Although letting people log in using Facebook, Twitter, or Google IDs (or Open ID, whatever) is good too.

I'm in the process of checking out Weebly and whatever else Google throws at me, but am hoping that the Soylent community can suggest something more appropriate that can be up and running with minimal fuss.

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