Le Livre d'Or

Is there a way use some sort of third party forum moderation to cut through this problem? Then you could go on in whatever way you are comfortable, your forums could coninue to buzz and anyone that's up to no good would hit a brick wall (or get a call from their local authorities, as appropriate). It's just a thought.

Having said all of that, I wonder if Ande's idea isn't the best (regardless of what format you choose to go with for the blog). If it was still public with no comments, but you cross-posted entries in a private forum, you could allow people to respond and discuss in a controlled/private environment, but still keep the blog itself public. I'm not sure how much extra work that would be for you, but if it was negligible I would say that's the best option for running your site the way you have and seem to love, but keeping the riffraff at bay.

Oodles of bloggers great and small would give a #1 Technorati rank (or insert personal thing of inestimable value here) to be able to host Kathy Sierra as a guest blogger. (Myself included.)

Use your passion and geek expertise to liberate the latent creativity that resides in readers, something that works better than the linear, sequential and fast fading stream of comments (yeah, this is recursive). Comments are writing, but lets have something not as we know it. Writing in this box just feel a little klunky, there must be a better way, make a better blog :)

I think that you'd probably do well in a consulting role where you are helping companies who want to improve in the area of creating passionate users (products and websites). Your knowledge of the field is shown well by your blogging, and maybe getting out in front of people will give you more of a reason to stay passionate about this subject area (if not the blog itself).