Written on February 1st, 2006 at 01:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Spam Karma 2 and the Eternal Struggle against Comment Spam
Users of Spam Karma 2 (a WP comment spam plugin) might have noticed increases in comment spam in the last week. Dr Dave (the guy behind SK2) has written a post with a little information on this and the struggle he faces in getting on top of it. He also asks users of SK2 to consider a donation so that he can dedicate more time to fixing it. I for one am someone willing to put some money up and encourage others who want to see better tools developed to combat comment spammers to do likewise.
16 Responses to “Spam Karma 2 and the Eternal Struggle against Comment Spam”
Rachel
February 1st, 2006 1:36 pm
In my experience, Akismet is much better than SK2.
Darren Rowse
February 1st, 2006 2:00 pm
yeah I’ve heard that but it also charges up to $200 per month for a commercial licence and needs WP 1.5.2 or more and I’m .1 off that at present :-)
Rachel
February 1st, 2006 2:33 pm
It’s $5/month for probloggers :)
Rian
February 1st, 2006 2:54 pm
“In my experience, Akismet is much better than SK2.”
In my experience, Akismet sticks *all* comments (except my own) into the moderation queue and has a real penchant for labeling trackbacks as spam. So I said goodbye to Akismet and went back to SK2.
Personally, I think it’s a wonder that anyone uses Akismet at all.
JMHO.
Darren Rowse
February 1st, 2006 3:01 pm
they define ‘probloggers’ as earning up to $500 per month. Then it goes into a commercial licence at a cost of $200 per month to use it.
Only thing I’m not sure of is whether the $500 earnings are per blog that you use it on and if the $5 and $200 fees are on a per blog basis.
» Spam Karma is still winning -- MacTips.info --- Miraz on Macs, web design and other matters.
February 1st, 2006 3:15 pm
[…] [Via Blog Tips at ProBlogger.] […]
Duncan
February 1st, 2006 4:52 pm
Personally I’m using WP-Gatekeeper at the moment, and combined with a strong blacklist (the standard one) I’m lucky if I get more than 1 or 2 pieces of spam a day.
Anthony
February 1st, 2006 4:59 pm
You can’t use Spam Karma on commercial blog though can you? I might be wrong but I’ve always avoided it because I thought the licence wouldn’t cover me.
Michael Moncur
February 1st, 2006 5:27 pm
Darren, you might try WP Hashcash if you haven’t. I have yet to see a spam comment get through - except for a few manually-typed ones - and have never seen a false positive.
I predict that we’ll all be switching to “registered users only” for comments within the next year, but in the meantime this works.
vivek
February 1st, 2006 7:56 pm
I am using Akismet provided by Yahoo :)
Rachel
February 1st, 2006 9:27 pm
Hmm, I read it differently Darren:
“so we’re saying if you’re making more than $500/mo from your blog we ask that you use a $5/mo pro-blogger Akismet API key”
Rian, I’ve been using Akismet on a number of blogs and haven’t had the problem you experienced at all, that sounds strange.
Mariano
February 2nd, 2006 6:29 am
I know exactly how you feel about it…
http://ninodolor.com.ar/nino/archives/23
:)
Cary
February 2nd, 2006 12:24 pm
I’ve been using Spam Karma for the last three months, and it seems to work exceptionally well…in fact it works so well that you almost forget it’s there.
I plan on donating, because it’s been a godsend :)
Cary
February 2nd, 2006 12:41 pm
@ Anthony,
Actually, according to the developer you CAN use SK2 on a commercial blog…
“you can still use SK2 on a commercial blog, the only restriction is on packaging and distributing or otherwise selling SK2 for profit”
Hope that clears things up :)
Michael Hampton
February 3rd, 2006 5:12 am
Rian, Akismet only sticks comments in the moderation queue when it can’t contact the Akismet server. Since my monitoring has shown it to be up pretty much continuously for the last few months, I’d suggest you check with your Web host and ensure that nothing they’ve done is preventing Akismet from communicating.
(Disclaimer: I’m one of the people responsible for Akismet, even though my part was quite small.)
Rian
February 3rd, 2006 7:55 am
Michael,
I have a dedicated server that I control. Nothing is/was blocked. I dunno what’s up.
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