I’ve added a few plugins that will affect commenting here.
The first, Comment Timeout, closes off comments and trackbacks on posts that after a certain amount of time. Right now, I have it set to close off comments after a post is more than 120 days old. If it works like I’m hoping I may turn off moderation for first-time comments, which I’ve had in effect for about two months now.
The second, Live Comment Preview, will give? you a real time preview of comments as you type.
I was also going to upgrade to Wordpress 2.1.3 this weekend, but decided not to given the imminent release of Wordpress 2.2
I’d set it to 30 days at the most… It’s rare that someone usually leaves a real comment on a post more than month old.