>>I'm scoping out a project where users will be able to query a database and have various information fields returned to them. They will then have the opportunity to submit comments about that information.
>>
>>To reduce comment spam I'd like to incorporate e-mail confirmation i.e.
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>>1. User has to provide a valid e-mail address along with the comment.
>>2. Upon submission, server attempts to e-mail the commentor at the provided e-mail.
>>3. If the e-mail goes through, the comment is accepted.
>>4. If the e-mail does not go through, the comment is rejected.
>>
>>From brief research on the Web it seems it's not too difficult to send e-mail from .NET (this would be running on Windows Server 2003 with the SMTP server enabled). However, I don't know how possible/practical it is to:
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>>- Get/read the result of the call that sends the mail
>>- Does that result (if available) indicate success/failure?
>>- How long does it typically take - is it practical to wait for the response before indicating success/failure to the commentor?
>>
>>Any experiences/ideas/comments welcome. TIA.
>
>Usually, this is done at the account creation time. By that I mean that once the account is created, an auto generated password is created and included in the welcome email. If the user doesn't provide a valid email, he will never be able to use the site as he will never receive his password. So, by using that approach, at first stage, you start with good accounts. If you provide account update to the user, then he might change the email later on but at least you would have a good start.

We specifically don't want to create accounts and have to manage them. We'd like users to be able to submit comments and require only an e-mail for confirmation. It's unlikely any single user would comment more than once or twice; if anyone becomes a "frequent commentor" I suppose we could have an optional registration which could save those few users some time.

Another general possibility would be use of captchas but an e-mail actually works better for our purposes.