A week or so ago I installed the Close Old Posts plugin to try and combat some of the comment spam zanshin.net receives. The plugin closes comments on any posting older than 14 days by default “on the fly.” No database queries are used, the postings are updated as they are viewed.
The plugin is working fantastically, from my perspective. Nearly all the comment spam I got was to older postings, and now that they are closed for comments, I’ve only had one spam make its way into the Akismet net.
I almost miss my daily ritual of deleting all the comment spam. Almost.