In reply to Alec.

Fair points, and I'm certainly not opposed to front-end moderation. However, as I noted in some of my other responses, the weakest aspect of WordPress native comments are in the notification and follow-up area.

I certainly appreciate keeping the comments native. I haven't tried to move one yet, but I can imagine. And, if staying native, I like the idea of a fall-back where functionality just disappears, but the comments are intact.

Also, I do appreciate the work WP devs are doing to try and improve the native comments. Why that didn't happen a decade ago, leaves me wondering.... especially in regards to core. (I get the concept of core being minimal, and then extending... but comments seem pretty 'core' to WordPress and blogging.)