We talked about those plugins once. The big negative is that each post or comment is submitted to an outside service for vetting, and there seemed to be a consensus that that sort of thing made us uneasy. If we take a dim view of our own moderators messing with posts, how much dimmer some third party?

Not that I have a better answer. It seems that between the Scylla of the desire to allow easy access to the Zone, and the Charybdis of wanting to preserve our privacy and keep third party fingers out of our pie, human trash collectors are the optimal solution.

Easy for me to say, when it's been you and podrock and few others doing the collecting. Thank you for that. Perhaps the answer is to spread the burden out to everyone. Let's look at rating systems, especially those that include a "spam!" button.

I'd welcome your help if you want to research plugins. I don't think you'll fall off a cliff if you stay focused on your search, and don't go haring off on tangents. I need to evaluate and test any plugins, but it's a huge help to me to have somebody winnow the candidates down to a manageable few.

Some basic criteria if you do accept this mission, Ms. Phelps: Plugins must be compatible with WP 3.0 or later; and...I can't think of more than that one. "Criterion", then.

Good luck!