Housekeeping notes re: comments

We're having problems managing comments within Typepad, our provider.  They've started a new comments system with a lot of hype, and the only change we can see is that comments are signed at the beginning, not the end, and they have a floofy pastel icon attached for no discernible reason we can see. We're trying to disable it, but they've notified us that comments under the new system may disappear.  We don't like that, either, 'cause some of them were pretty good, so we're trying to work around it.  Be patient with us!