Last night we've had a technical glitch with our spam filter.

When a user posts a comment, the system routinely checks it for potential spam. Spam is hardly ever an issue with our regular users, but comment abuse is a known problem in all web publishing and so this function is crucial in ensuring a good flow in our community (especially as the comments function is also open for casual visitors). Normally the spam check is conducted in a fraction of a second and is not noticeable.

Yesterday the spam filter database has temporarily gone offline with the result that the system withheld all new comments pending spam check. This means that some of the comments were shown to their authors as "awaiting moderation".

This has been already resolved and so everything should be back to normal!