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Only Trusted Users can see and rate hidden comments. From Janra's explanation I understand that they become ordinary hidden comments, so they'll follow the same rules.

Maybe we should just restrict comments to one per 24 hours per IP address unless you register.  Enough to let newbies get their feet wet, not enough to be worth a spammer's while.  Not sure how implementable that is in Scoop.

Blocking only a single IP address isn't likely to have much effect. People with telephone modems just hang up and re-connect, that gets them a new IP address. And I think large-scale spammers are likely to have many IP addresses, maybe a whole subnet of 254 IP addresses each, and/or they'll move often.

Such subnets are recognizable. The first three numbers in the IP address are the same for all members of the subnet. Only the last number differs, it's anything from 1 to 254.

If Scoop can do it, I think it would be a good idea to allow, say, maybe three, maybe five anonymous comments from each subnet to become immediately visible when posted. If any more were posted from the same subnet in the same day they'd get hidden until rated, with a polite explanation. There could also be a maximum total, counting all comments regardless of IP address, maybe ten or fifteen per day. Later anonymous comments from anywhere would be hidden until rated, until another maximum were reached. After that all anonymous comments would be blocked completely for that day.

Subnets that had spammed could stay limited for several days, with only, say, two anonymous comments accepted every day from that subnet, both hidden until rated, and any later anonymous comments blocked completely. If the spamming persisted it could be further limited to two per week, just enough to see if it persists. This should keep down the amount of spam.

I think usually this wouldn't interfere much with good contributors and real discussions, and still the spam count would probably be quite manageable.

But you are right that it would dissuade a certain number from posting.  I'm just not sure what the proportions would be.

BUT unlike anonymous posts, which have no throttle (I think), signed-in users can only post a certain number of comments in a small time-period. So it would be easier to catch the spam and delete it quickly, along with the spammer's account.

So have two levels of registered users.  Basic users can only post x number of times per time period.  Once a basic user satisfies some condition -- having an existing user approve them, or post x number of comments which don't get zeroed or nuked -- then the throttle goes away and they can go to town.

It would probably work better than validating email addresses, since it's hardly difficult to secure a disposable email address.