Limiting number of outside commentators of a post

After reaching a certain number of participants, the discussion becomes uncontrollable. It feels as if you’re inside a screaming crowd. To handle this, popular bloggers often close comments from outsiders (non-friends), but it creates an information bubble and limits the number of interesting opinions. Also sometimes not-so-popular bloggers are hit by a wave of commentators when their post suddenly becomes viral. Some immediate measure is needed to handle this.

I propose to set some configurable limit for the number of outsiders that are allowed to participate in the discussion. After reaching the limit, the commenting is closed automatically for new outside participants and not reopened even after some commentators are kicked out (to prevent endless moderation). It should also be possible to manually open/close commenting for new outside participants.

The issue names no files, tests, or entry points. Start by locating the post-commenting and outsider-participant logic, then determine how configuration and manual controls are exposed. Done means enforcing a persistent configurable outsider limit while allowing moderators to open or close new outsider comments.