It wasn't, until you mentioned it :). Gah, there's so many automated tools for fighting spam, everything from just filtering stuff through GMail to Spamassassin tricks to dedicated anti-spam appliances. I'm sure in the end whatever technique we pick will ease the burden on the team, but because of the accessibility issues denise referred to we need to have a way to shut pretty much any one off. Also, thanks to having an invite system, we've yet to have a spammer with an actual account or OpenID, so anyone that restricts their journal or community to registered users doesn't get spammed. But since there's many good reasons to have an open community and a driving need for not inhibiting AT's, not to mention the ever-increasing creativity of penis pill peddlers with enough brains to code but no scruples whatsoever, the valiant team will not find themselves out of work anytime soon!

Unfortunately, I'm going to be blunt honest here - anything that we might suggest to handle spam is going to upset somebody, so until we've decided just how we want to risk upsetting people, we're not discussing specifics in public until the ideas are a little more developed. That said, we don't hide very much - anyone that pokes around IRC and gets to know any of the project leaders, coders, support people, and everyone else that hangs out there knows what's going on long before it hits dw_news.

(I figure you knew most if not all of this, but I'm saying it for the benefit of our readers.)