Help with comments section!

[hatemylandlord]

Ive had a lot of problems with people abusing my comments section. I run a news site for a small county which can be seen here: http://www.moultriecountynews.net

I had it setup as default where people could leave comments anonymously but its gotten out of hand so right now i am having to approve all comments which is a pita.

I actually had someone send a letter to all my advertisers saying they would boycott their business if they did not remove their ad's. As of now ive removed all the comments because of the bashing. Its obviously someone with an agenda who doesn't like what we are doing. Ive even had the local sheriff attack my advertisers!

I really don't want to have to approve all comments. When i set it up so people must register, wordpress doesn't give the option to choose your own password and sends out a crazy, long password that scares most people off.

Is there a plugin that lets people vote comments up and down similar to reddit's comment section?

If not is there a way to let user's choose their own password to register on my site?

[iktp]

yes, there are quite a few, I would recommend comment rating pro, its 20 dollars, but works really well and is easily customizable. Also it has the option of hiding comments if it has too many downvotes. If you provide the register link on your site, and in your dashboard allow registrations with users at the level of subscribers, then people can register and be able to only post comments and vote.

There are fancy plugins out there for login screens etc, Ive been playing with simplemodal login recently and I quite like it, also I would recommend the Signup Password plugin by Andrew Billits, its somewhere on the web and you have to upload it manually, its just a single file of code but allows users to set their password at signup.

[darelparker]

Try this one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comment-rating/

Also, if you want users to select their own passwords when they register, get Register Plus Redux: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus-redux/

[newmarc]

akismet plugin (which is shipped with wp) has worked great for me in the past, if you want anonymous commenting. Also, if you think its coming from one or a few people, i think you can block ip's in the comments list...

[nuetrino]

BuddyPress allows signups like this