This is easily checked, isn't it? I propose that you keep the current policy for a month, then switch to regular pre-moderated blog comments for a month.

For example - and sorry for descending to object-level current politics- I wanted to reply to Mike's off-hand mention of Putin as a successful and efficient modern authoritarian ruler with something along the lines of:
"Goddamnit, I actually live here, and I get to see the bureaucracy paralyzed with nepotism and corruption, the unsustainable loot-n-run resource-extracting economy, the barely functional public sector under perpetual directionless reform, the brewing sense of anger and despair due to social inequality, the uncontrollable and semi-criminal repressive apparatus, the growing cultural and ethnic rifts destroying what sense of shared identity us "Russians" had remaining..."
Yet such a simple listing of complaints about Mike's characterization doesn't feel like enough to fire up an email for, and I don't feel like going deeper into it. Would you view something like this as even marginally useful input?

Of course I agree that unmoderated comments would be a clusterfuck. Don't think anyone was suggesting otherwise.