Comments on: APAD: Akismet

By: Gavin Ingham

Gavin Ingham — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:22:12 +0000

Until about 3 months or so ago Askimet span worked fine for me stopping 90%+ of spam and with what seemed high accuracy. Then over night everything changed. Askimet stopped catching spam and stopped being able to see what was and what was not spam.

I am sure that I do not get that much spam compared to some but comments on other sites such as read your spam comments are not really practical (I get several hundred a day and rising) and totally negate the point of having it in the first place.

Over the last day or two the stats were as follows…

Total comments & spam 359.
Awaiting moderation 174 – Spam 170, legitimate 4.
Askimet spam 185 – Spam 168, legitimate 7.

This would imply that Askimet is guessing and not that well at that. I have emailed Askimet to ask for advice but would be interested if anyone else has experienced a rapid change in fortunes with Askimet, what caused it and what the solution is…

By: æˆ‘çˆ±æ°´ç…®é±¼ » Akismet

æˆ‘çˆ±æ°´ç…®é±¼ » Akismet — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:57:52 +0000

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By: Ajay

Ajay — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:11:23 +0000

BTW, when you say you read my blog, do you mean ajaydsouza.com ?

By: Ajay

Ajay — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 11:10:35 +0000

Hi Krow,

I can understand that from the length of the review, it does seem to suggest that they might not be balanced.

However, let me assure that this isn’t the case. I have tested both SK2 and Akismet on my blog for lengths of time to get a feel of the working and effectiveness of both and the reviews now are from that experience.

I do not think that comment spam can be caught by a single service / check alone and you need to have several checks.
Akismet as a service does a lot of checks and is a reliable solution for most users. But, if you want to run several checks yourself as well as tap the power of Akismet, you’ll need to use another solution like SK2.

The reason I recommend SK2 over akismet, is that I can run more checks on my incoming comments and use the Akismet service as well.

By: Krow

Krow — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:20:33 +0000

I understand you believe that Akismet is second to SK2 but it would have been nice to get a more balanced review of both. The Akismet review is much more indepth compared to the one for SK2, which imho could have done with a more critical perspective as given to Akismet.

I visit your blog daily and really do respect your opinion and recommendations on matters particularly relating to Wordpress so I believe its only fair that all APAD reviews should be given the same yard stick.

By: Squawkbox

Squawkbox — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:20:10 +0000

We use Akismet on my blog. I am seriously considering dropping Akismet and going back to Spam Karma. In the past 2 weeks the false positives have increased to a level that have become unacceptable. I have 8 to 10 long time commenters that seem to get flagged as spammers on a regular basis. There are no entries in the comment moderation or comment blacklist boxes under Discussion Options to cause the problem. Furthermore their IP address are from my local telco as are there user email addresses.

I restore their comments time and again including their attempted reposts yet Akismet continues to hit them hard. I’m sorry but their is something in the Akismet filters that does not learn that these commenters ARE NOT spammers.

I do have to commend Akismet for stopping legitimate spam.

By: WeblogToolsCollection EspaÃ±ol » Blog Archive » APAD: Akismet

WeblogToolsCollection EspaÃ±ol » Blog Archive » APAD: Akismet — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:44:48 +0000

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By: Laszlo Mag

Laszlo Mag — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:28:33 +0000

Akismet has for me been briliant thus far…it has detected all spam attempts and no “real” comments have been filtered as spam by accident.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:59:18 +0000

I use Akismet exclusively as well. I would say in the year or so I’ve been using it, it has suffered from maybe 5-10 false positives. I have found it is a matter of checking the queue daily to ensure any false positive gets approved. Really the only false positives I’ve suffered come from a reader who is posting a few links to help further the conversation. Other than that, perfection!

By: Guy R. Vestal

Guy R. Vestal — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:51:05 +0000

I use Akismet alone as many here have stated. Other blogs I have been on have never shown false positives, maybe I was just lucky huh? I just got my fist spam caught yesterday on my new blog, and I must admit it makes me feel more like a member of the blogosphere when I get that first spam! Kinda like a ritual of passing, I finally have grown up and become a member of the family. Somebody loves me now, they spammed me. hee hee.

Besides, I love to read through the spam, I get a kick out of the folks who think that peddling their viagra will make them multi-millionares!

By: Ozh

Ozh — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:43:39 +0000

I’m running BB + Akismet on my blogs. Sometimes a spam gets in, but I never check spam catched though (did a little a while ago, but I got tired of reading real spam)

As for the “I am not spam” problem, there’s a feature I’d love to be implemented on Akismet : a form where you would enter your name, email, blog URL, and which would tell you if those informations (along with you IP) are supposedly clean, suspicious or unknown. Not that you could do something with it, but it would be nice to know

By: LiewCF

LiewCF — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:53:29 +0000

I just switched from SpamKarma2 to Akismet after recent WordPress upgrade. Akismet has improved a lot in detecting spam comments/trackbacks.

By: Pi

Pi — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:09:44 +0000

I am running Aksimet on my server for a WordPress-based weblog in conjunction with a plug-in which allows me to close comments after a certain period of time. Akismet catches everything - including splogs, which pleases me immensely - and the closed comments remove the rest. Many comment spammers go for the older posts when launching their attacks, and Akismet doesn’t get to touch these on my weblog. At present Akismet has made only one false positive - from nearly 15,000 spam comments - and the servers only failed once to my detriment in the last seven months.

By: Storm

Storm — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:59:05 +0000

So far I love Akismet. I did instantly I read about the concept behind it. Now I have also turned off comments on older postes due to a lot of trackback spam sliding through.

To be honest I have only checked my spam folder three times since I began using Akismet. No false positives those times. But I do feel that it’s a little underwhelming that I have gotten only three comments in six months. Even though I realize that I’m not all that interesting

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:21:24 +0000

Unfortunately, non-profit organizations have to pay $25 per month to use Akismet. That’s a ridiculously high amount and is way beyond our budget. So, I disabled it. My setup is that only registered users can comment, and I disabled trackbacks, so I don’t think I need any other spam blockers.

By: Len

Len — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:12:14 +0000

I’ve been using Akismet in conjunction with Bad Behaviour and have never had a problem. (knock on wood)

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:32:43 +0000

I use Akismet along with an IP blocker called WP Ban. When there is a persistent stream from a few sources it seems better to stop at the source rather than take the bandwidth hit and slow down the performance of the site for something that is so easy to solve.

By: nikkiana

nikkiana — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:38:12 +0000

I’m also relying on Akismet as my only spam prevention method at the moment. I think I’ve maybe had two-false positives in the entire time I’ve been using it… and both times the commenter alerted to me the fact that their comment may have been flagged as spam. I keep an eye out for false positives just to be safe, but it’s not been a huge issue (if I was getting false positives daily, I’d be upset, but since it’s been a fairly isolated occurance, I’m not going to be bugged).

By: Rasmus

Rasmus — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:24:11 +0000

I’m also relying exclusively on Akismet. Like the others, I check the queue and the list of comments frequently. I haven’t yet seen false-positives, but I had a couple of false-negatives recently.
But right now, I don’t see any reason for changing to another plugin, since my blog is quite small and the amount of spam comments manageable.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:01:22 +0000

So far, I’ve yet to have a spam comment make it through Askimet, and though I check for false-positives a few times were week and don’t find any, nor have I had any complaints, I tend not to worry about the few innocent comments that may get lost in the mix.