we thought it was better for the default to be more protective, rather than less protective, and we thought it was better to allow people to choose to be less protective if they wanted to

I believe that was the correct choice. I would've turned IP logging on on signup anyway, but most wouldn't know what it was until it happened.

I've had abusive comments, and more recently I've had cause to confirm a comment was from someone in an area of London they claimed to be--people that care can turn it off, people that don't understand get a degree of safety that's useful.

It's pretty common on any service to see a drop-off of people creating accounts and then wandering away because they decided the service isn't for them, and on LJ it was (and still is) pretty common for those abandoned accounts to become nothing more than spam graveyards

Does IP logging help for that though? Spam team have access to full logs, but can't see IP address of an abandoned account.

I've been thinking of some other ideas for that problem anyway, poke me to submit some suggestions soon (preferably when my capital city isn't on fire, but, y'know).