The issue is resolved. Indeed Dave was right and there was something wrong with the way the system was installed.
This was strange. general-comments was appearing as an "unmounted singleton" and not in the site map. It was also not appearing in the pulldown where you mount applications on the site-map. I know I never mounted it because the site in question had no need. A real puzzle.
After posting this yesterday, hub.org had a HD failure and when they restored, the unwanted link-spam was still there, however, general-comments wasn't in the "unmounted singleton" area but it was appearing in the pulldown.
I was able to mount the application and configure it to require approval, as I would have expected, and then go to /general-comments/ and reject all the link spam.
At this point, I'm unsure what fixed the issue. Probably the reboot. Maybe it was the restore.
