I have enabled custom comments on this blog; you can see it on the bottom of any recent page. Once a page falls off the navigation menu, comments are automatically closed.

It’s a very simple system. There are no logins. The first time you post, assuming you have cookies turned on, you’ll be given a cookie that acts as your login. For as long as you have that cookie, you are “logged in” and I can set your posts to be automatically approved. Initial comments, and commenters that don’t have cookies, will always need to be manually approved.

You can include basic HTML in the comments: ‘a’ tags for links, ‘em’ tags for emphasis, and ‘blockquote’ tags for quoting some other text. Use two carriage returns to mark a paragraph, one to mark a simple line break.

You must preview your comments; the longer your comment, the more time you must take previewing it. It’s not that long—you’ll see the number of seconds in the title of your comment’s preview.

The comments system is inspired by the one in use at a milblog called Ace of Spades HQ. There are no usernames and no screen names, just sock puppets. Why not embrace the stateless, anonymous nature of the web? The system sets a cookie in your browser to remind you of what you used as your screen name the last time you posted, but there’s no requirement that you use it again.

There is a fingerprint at the bottom of each post. It’s not much, but it’s your only real public identifier other than your posting style.

Consider yourselves guinea pigs. If this system works, I’ll be migrating it to my other domains.