@Jeffro - I agree that "5 or more links" sounds like a fair setting but I wonder why just one link is triggering it?

Yes, I appreciate that you can hang around waiting to approve comments, I appreciate that you are doing this at all and, yes, I understood that the two WordUp Edinburgh organizers got caught by the previously approved comment rules, it was just unfortunate.

I wonder if, for a site as popular as this, it might not be a better idea to use some sort of flagging by users? Allow all comments to appear but put them into moderation if they are flagged by one of your readers. I would certainly be happy to zap any spam comments that got through.