Signatures in Weblog Comments

Should this be allowed? Darren polled and fetched us the result: The majority would accept individual signatures, but I have one dearing problem with this:

Weblogs are no Webboards!

The idea of discussion is wonderful, but people already get their chance to enter a name, an url and an email for any communication below the level of using the comment section of a weblog. And most of the users which might want to use signatures here will simply end up in the moderation queue of my blog. I’d choose between manually erasing their signatures (if these exceed more than 2 lines or contain problematic content), or I’d simply squish them by deleting the entire comment.

I still have concerns that such practices makes fighting spam comments difficult

I do wonder where the practice will end up (I really hope we don’t end up with comment threads being like the terrible mix mash of signatures that we see on many discussion forums)

And while using anti-spam plugins like BadBehavior ;), I’d fear the users get thrown out for their signatures… not sure how BB reacts to a massive load about signatures. And always remember, there’s the good old Comment Policy awaiting the commenters…