D.C. Wire, the Post's blog on local politics, hasn't had it easy in recent months -- after a promising start, posting became somewhat sporadic, leading us to question whether or not the blog would survive or not. It has, and its contributors have been active as of late.

Now it has another problem -- comments.

It's not that there aren't enough -- it's that there are far too many. And beyond the sheer numbers, D.C. Wire's comments section has become a sparring ground for Ward 3 candidate Jonathan Rees, his many online personalities, and his dedicated detractors. Comments on most posts rarely stay on topic, and the battles between Rees and his opponents have become particularly vicious. So vitriolic and unending became the comments on one post that the blog's administrator was forced to delete a number of comments (there were 186 yesterday, today there are only 117) and finally shut down comments altogether. Comments on a recent post were moderated this morning, with some 16 having been deleted.

Unfortunately, D.C. Wire is only the latest front in a long-running fight between Rees and a number of neighborhood listservs, blogs, and messageboards. The City Paper's new blog, City Desk, has been forced to moderate comments, while Craigslist users are perpetually complaining of campaign spam coming from Rees and his cohorts. DCist has long suffered through this battle, though as of recent all has been quiet on our front.

How will D.C. Wire reign in what has become comment anarchy? They hinted to DCist that some form of moderation was in the works that would involve having commenters verify their identity. While this is all well and good, our own experiment with such a system did more to discourage comments than actually weed out the many anonymous commenters and their aliases.

For now, though, D.C. Wire's comments section remains open. Sadly, we all know exactly who will be spending all their time there.