Written on May 27th, 2008 at 06:05 am by Darren Rowse
My Love Hate Relationship with Akismet
I love Akismet - it’s a WordPress tool that has literally saved me months of work. It has blocked 4,059,113 comment spams on ProBlogger alone over the last year or two - something that I will be forever grateful for!
However every day or two I get an email like this:
“I have been trying to leave comments on your blog but they never appear! Did I say something wrong?”
Now when a blog gets as many comment spams as I do in a day there are bound to be some false positives - but over the last couple of months these emails are getting more and more frequent. The problem concerns me for two reasons. Firstly I want everyone who wants to comment on my posts to be able to. Secondly many of those whose comments are falsely blocked think that I’m the one behind their comment being blocked. I’ve had angry comments from readers as well as bloggers blogging about me censoring them. The reality is that unless a comment is explicit, spammy or defamatory I don’t delete comments.
I’m not sure what the reason is for these false positives it but it’s becoming apparent that quite a few legitimate blog readers are getting on Akimset’s blacklist falsely. It’s also seems to me that when I mark a comment as ‘not spam’ that Akismet isn’t ‘learning’ of it’s mistake because quite a few people’s comments seem to still be filtered as spam. Akismet says that it can take a couple of days to fix these but I’ve had a few people not be able to comment for weeks now. My approach is generally to ask them to contact Akismet directly. Quite often these people are unable to comment on other blogs also.
Perhaps Akismet could provide us with some way for us as bloggers to add to a whitelist of commenters. I’d love to simply take the emails of those who have problems and add them to such a list that automatically lets people comment. I’m also wondering if there’s some way of notifying commenters that are filtered as spam that this is what has happened and to point them into the direction of some sort of procedure to rectify it if they feel that their comment isn’t spam?
106 Responses to “My Love Hate Relationship with Akismet”
Carl - BeABetterBlogger
May 27th, 2008 6:06 am
I’ve noticed that with some blogs I’ve owned in the past. I have mass amount of spam and there are some normal comments in there that I totally miss.
Well I suppose we can’t complain with the job it does :)
Keith
May 27th, 2008 6:17 am
I’ve found this happens a lot less with Akismet since I uninstalled Span Karma 2.
Paul Nowak
May 27th, 2008 6:19 am
That’s excelent idea, but it would probably take spammers about 24h to set up some blogs, whitelists themself as legit users.
You can try some other spam-blocking tools like Spam Karma 2 or Bad Behaviour. SK2 has so many options that it’s practicly inposible to know all of them.
On my blog SK2 and BB works great and I turned Akismet off.
Solo Business Marketing
May 27th, 2008 6:21 am
I’m in the same position, Darren.
I’ve had to deactivate Akismet for the same reason, but checking each message (99.9 percent is spam) is not the answer, and I’ve not had luck with Bad Behavior either.
What’s working for other readers? I’d like to know through comments.
Leora
May 27th, 2008 6:21 am
I noticed recently that more of my regular commenters were having their comments “swallowed up” by Akismet. I put up a post about my needing to “fish out” the missing comment for them. I couldn’t find a pattern to the false positives.
Sue @ TameBay
May 27th, 2008 6:32 am
This isn’t a solution - I too would LOVE a whitelist - but since we installed Bad Behaviour, almost all the real spammers are blocked by that plugin. We get a couple of dozen comments a week which get through Bad Behaviour and are caught by Akismet, so it’s very easy to see which are the false positives.
Cory at Dental Heroes
May 27th, 2008 6:36 am
I’ve been using Spam Karma 2 with great success. Do I really need to incorporate Akismet as well?
Chris
May 27th, 2008 6:39 am
At the moment, I tend to get only 5 spam comments a day… so it’s pretty easy for me to look through them and double check them. So far no false positives.
However, if/when my comment traffic gets heavier, I can imagine it being much harder to manually check the spam queue. A whitelist would be very handy.
Lisa Irby
May 27th, 2008 6:40 am
I have the same problem too and find myself combing through the spam from time to time to make sure I haven’t missed a legit comment.
Alex Brooks
May 27th, 2008 6:45 am
Akismet is letting through an awful lot of spam for me at the moment.
In the past I’ve very rarely monitored comments, everything just seemed to work out fine but in the last I’m receiving hundreds of spam comments a day which I manually have to mark.
Popular Wealth
May 27th, 2008 6:46 am
The Solution Is Simple
If your comment is being blocked that is and assuming you have more than one blog which most people do.
Write a comment on your ‘other’ blog and when it gets trapped as spam, mark it as non spam, delete it and repeat.
After marking your comments as non spam several times Akismet gets the message and stops filtering you out internet wide. If you spam a LOT however… I suspect you’ll be doing this for days.
Sophie
May 27th, 2008 6:52 am
I’ve just installed akismet on moveable type in the last few days and am so impressed with how well it works (no accidents so far!).
A whitelist is a really good idea - the tricky part would be designing something that only allowed valid bloggers to submit to the list
Eric
May 27th, 2008 6:55 am
Thankfully, I have not had this problem when commenting.
I think the idea of a white list would be very helpful.
Danielle
May 27th, 2008 6:57 am
I love Akismet, it’s saved me from tens of thousands of spam (which pales in comparison to your numbers, but for a personal blog, five figures of spam is staggering, and annoying!) It’s only very rarely that I find a false positive, but there have been a few over the time I’ve used it.
A whitelist is a great idea, and I sincerely hope the folks at Akismet read this post and act!
monawea
May 27th, 2008 6:58 am
I feel the same way. I get so much spam in the Akismet that I can’t check to make sure it’s all spam. I just deleted over 2500 spam comments I and I sure hope there were no legit comments. It’s the life of blogging I guess.
Rebellious Arab Girl
May 27th, 2008 7:01 am
OOOH!! I got a list of them that Akismet couldn’t catch because they were so normal.. yet.. didn’t relate to the post. lol
“To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.”
“Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn’t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.”
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
Can anyone ever think these were fakes? Some I had to read 2 or 3 times to understand the connection of them with my post.
Brent2
May 27th, 2008 7:03 am
I’ve yet to have any false positives but Askimet has grabbed all of 15 Spam. That being said, I’ve had about half that get through (which I caught in moderation).
Still, I’d certainly be willing to go in and whitelist people, especially in these early blog development stages.
Oli from the-iBlog
May 27th, 2008 7:08 am
Luckily I’ve not had any such problems with Akismet, but having said that I don’t get too many comments anyway :(
Chris
May 27th, 2008 7:24 am
I’ve also had a few false positives, but when you look at the blocked comment it’s difficult to understand why.
No embedded links, no cursing, no mention of dodgy websites or drugs for sale and yet the filter stops them.
Perhaps Akismet could provide some indication as to why it rejects the comment.
Kirk Warren
May 27th, 2008 7:25 am
I use Blogger and I don’t have any filter or plugin for my comments and I have only been spammed once. The only thing I use is the “wait for moderation” feature and just approve eveyr comment I get in my email.
My site isn’t nearly as big as ProBlogger, but I’ve run a site on WordPress that barely got 50 people viewing it as its biggest one day total and it gets dozens of blocked spam per day.
Maybe Blogger blocks these spams easily (I dont use captchas) and doesn’t show them in the interface, but I think it’s something inheriently wrong with the Word Press comments that attracts the spam from my very simple experience with the two platforms.
Pachecus
May 27th, 2008 7:44 am
Askimet works very good for me..
Dave Marshall
May 27th, 2008 7:50 am
I think akismet should provide the ’scores’ it gives each spam comment. Bloggers should then be able to set their own threshold for review. That way, the bloggers can review the spam that is borderline, but ignore the pure spam.
Our email server spam filter works like this, if the spam ’score’ is over a certain amount, the server just ditches the email, but if it’s only a little spammy, we get an email saying it caught it. That way if it was wrong, we can correct it.
Lara Kulpa
May 27th, 2008 8:00 am
For what it’s worth, as a comment moderator here on PB, I’ve been using Auntie Akismet (a greasemonkey script for FireFox) to help me with the comments trapped up by spam here.
Seriously, I’ve gone in there to find over 9000 spams at once. This helps me see spam in a nice, one-line format, and scan through those who only left one or two (or 5 or 20) comments. It’s been a great help, but still, there’s no guarantee I won’t miss one here and there.
As Darren does, I too don’t delete comments unless they’re spammy, explicit, or defamatory. And if I’ve got a question about one, I either save it for Darren or email him to let him know.
I’ve used SpamKarma on other blogs, and it seems to take a lot longer to go through and delete the spam. It does work well, I give it credit, but it also hasn’t been updated in a while, so sometimes I wonder. I’ve gone back to using Akismet on all my own blogs at this point. And Bad Behavior never worked right for me… no idea why, but it just never communicated with my server or database properly. *shrug*
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know about the AA plugin (don’t know the link at the moment) and reassure you all that I follow Darren’s “rules” when it comes to comment modding here on PB. :)
Justin @ materialicious
May 27th, 2008 8:02 am
I tried to comment, and was rejected (I think…), because I included a url for WP SpamFree plugin - I use it now as a standalone instead of Akismet & Bad Behavior, and so far it works like a charm
Christopher Price
May 27th, 2008 8:15 am
Many times, it isn’t Akismet. WordPress isn’t perfect at posting comments, and after suggesting that the user try again… it goes through without problem.
Duhh
May 27th, 2008 8:16 am
A company called Mollom is developing an alternative to Askimet that has an accuracy of 99.77%. They were featured on TechCrunch. Try Googling them, unfortunately currently we’re waiting for a Wordpress plugin, but if you run Drupal your in luck.
Nathan Rice
May 27th, 2008 8:38 am
I think that Akismet should have a faster learning capability, but still takes into account spammers trying to game it.
There needs to be a system in place to value certain blogs over others, so that spammers can’t simply create blogs to de-spam their own comments. Some sort of process that only real human beings would go through.
But if the history of the internet is any indicator, every trick you throw at a spammer will eventually be circumvented. You have to constantly innovate to stay a step ahead. Anti-spam and anti-virus companies definitely have their work cut for them.
However, considering the volume of spam akismet has been able to block (false-positives, notwithstanding), I think they do a pretty good job, especially being a free service.
Martyn
May 27th, 2008 8:40 am
The question is why is askinet seeing theses comments as spam. I suspect somewhere down the line the bloggers may have left a comment, which was poor quality or negative, this then got marked as span and has hence blacklisted them. I often see new bloggers following the tactic that writing comments in large quantity will gain them traffic, with no regard for quality. This could lead to a comment be marked as spam. On the other hand, must not rule out the accidental marking of comments as spam as well!
mooiness
May 27th, 2008 8:43 am
I’d like to second (or third) the opinion that SK2 + Bad Behaviour works a treat. I was turned off Akismet from the beginning precisely because of the reasons that you have stated in your post.
infmom
May 27th, 2008 8:50 am
I use a combination of Spam Karma 2, Trackback Validator and AntiLeech. I think I’ve only gotten three false positives in the past year and a half.
Lightening@Lightening Online
May 27th, 2008 9:12 am
I LOVE that idea. I had a 2-week NIGHTMARE where ALL my comments went to spam despite all my regular blogs rescuing me over and over again. Took 2 emails to Akismet to fix the problem. :( It was HORRIBLE!
Stefan
May 27th, 2008 9:50 am
I use WordVerify in combination with Akismet. Reduced my comment spams from 50 to 0 (with 1.500 visits a day). Only some trackback or ping spam left to check in Akismet. A great relief.
Frank C
May 27th, 2008 10:14 am
I had some ‘false positive’ problems about 6 months ago. While the Akismet team was good about clearing it up, it is especially annoying to know that someone can take away your ability to comment on almost all WordPress blogs with a single malicious or accidental click.
That said, there has been a big increase recently in automated comment spamming so I’m glad there is some help in dealing with that situation.
Ryan McLean
May 27th, 2008 10:14 am
This is a great idea. I get a whole bunch of spam on my financial blog (no idea where it came from) and I don’t want to be wasting my time sorting through it everyday (especially as my blog grows).
But also I don’t want to block out those that want to comment. A whitelist is a fantastic idea.
Great post Darren, you continue to inspire me to write a better blog
Make Money Talks
May 27th, 2008 10:57 am
Would be nice to get option to create
yourself white list of commentators!
Anthony at Work-at-home-Wealth.com
May 27th, 2008 11:48 am
“I suspect somewhere down the line the bloggers may have left a comment, which was poor quality or negative, this then got marked as spam and has hence blacklisted them” I agree with that. I believe that’s the most provable reason why legitimate comments are swallowed as spam by Akismet.
The most annoying spam comes from spambots which can post thousand of porn and pharma links on your blog. human spammers are usually the kind of “great post” or “I agree” comments.
I use Bad Behavior and Akismet on my blog. While BB takes care of spambots, AK receives those which have passed the first line of defense (not too many indeed).
Having such a short list on AK spam queue it’s not a problem to me to take a look for false positives before mass deleting spam.
Luis Gross
May 27th, 2008 12:33 pm
Hey! Darren I’m so glad you touched on Akismet, this was a problem for me once. I had to contact Darren and ask him what happened, he advised me to contact Akismet with my problem. I did just that, they contacted me about 4 days later letting me know that problem was fixed.
I must agree it is a problem, and I believe this is the reason. If you see the post on is key-wording on comments spam? Darren wrote, you will notice a lot of webmaster’s will mark a relevant legit comment spam because of the keyword of in the name field.
This also happens for short comments, non-relevant comments, and comments like “great site!,” “love the blog,” etc. When webmaster’s mark these comments spam, Akismet picks up on this and learns and then the commenter will be blocked from every blog that uses Akismet.
earl bumotad
May 27th, 2008 1:25 pm
Thanks guys. These tips are very helpful. I have the same problem though usually, I am the person who would write:
“I have been trying to leave comments on your blog but they never appear! Did I say something wrong?”
So, I decided to start my own blog instead! Good idea, don’t you think?
http://www.efm.lk
Tom Stine | Living from Consciousness
May 27th, 2008 1:33 pm
Wouldn’t a solution be for Akismet plugin to have a LOCAL whitelist? Not a big Internet wide one, but a local one on my installation. Then I can add anyone I want to it, and not worry about the rest of the blogosphere. Seems like an easy code for the folks at Automattic.
Brent2
May 27th, 2008 1:36 pm
Well, on the commenter’s side, make sure you add something. Don’t just say “You gave great advice! Loved your post!”
Some people, especially those with popular blogs, may just tag you as Spam out of annoyance. I know I sometimes think it, even when just reading the comments in another blog.
Collin LaHay
May 27th, 2008 2:11 pm
I don’t think a whitelist is a good idea. Generally the commentators were reported for something in the past that got them in the blacklist, and so even if some of them deserved to be moved back, the risk of them actually getting their blacklist turned into a whitelist might end up with even more spammy comments. This way, a spammer could keep a legit profile on big blogs to get whitelisted, then spam a ton of little blogs… just my two cents.
Joe
May 27th, 2008 2:23 pm
I’m glad that my comments don’t get caught by akismet. Having a blog with much less traffic that Problogger, I don’t have to worry about this quite yet. I’m not sure how to increase the effectiveness of akismet, but perhaps the blame lies in the commenter?
jhay
May 27th, 2008 2:28 pm
I’ve had the same problem before. Contacting Akismet directly solved the problem within a day.
It’s a sign that Akismet needs some serious revamp or upgrade. With all the WP-powered blogs out there, Akismet may be getting under a lot of strain.
I know there’s a plugin that notifies commenters whenever their comments have been flagged as spam. Just forgot the name though. I’m sure Google knows. :P
Shaan
May 27th, 2008 2:30 pm
I’m also using Akismet on my blog. Sometimes it is considering trackbacks as spam.
And one thing i’m wondering about is that, before using Akismet i was never getting those long spam comments with lots of links.
Regards,
Shaan Haider
Brent2
May 27th, 2008 2:59 pm
@Shaan
Good point. What if the whitelist was blog specific? That way the little blogs would still be protected.
Dan Schulz
May 27th, 2008 3:01 pm
Darren - do what Mike Cherim does. He has a notice on his contact form that says “If your response inexplicably vanishes, it’s Akismet. I will rescue it.”
Perhapsj including such a by-line and a link to your contact page instructing the user to contact you so the problem can be fixed would be a good interim solution.
The Masked Millionaire
May 27th, 2008 3:49 pm
I also was blocked for leaving a url. Finally got the problem fixed. However I noticed recently my comments are not showing up on one or two blogs for no apparent reason.
I’m tired of dealing with the problem so I just unsubscrided.
The Masked Millionaire
Karl
May 27th, 2008 4:32 pm
There are a lot more bloggers now, a lot of them using wordpress and akismet. But not all people understand spam: is a couple of generic sentences spam? is using keywords as the name spam? Judging from a previous post about using keywords instead of names, a lot of people seem to be reporting comments (even if they are of good quality) as spam.
Once the commentor is marked, incorrectly, as spam then it’s battle to get that changed.
So, for akisment users, think carefully before you mark someone as a spammer. Maybe a delete would be sufficent? Or, if you have specific requirements from commentors then let them know before they commnent!
Chris
May 27th, 2008 5:45 pm
Haha! Having said I’ve never had any false positives… I got my first one today :P
Lawrence Salberg
May 27th, 2008 7:42 pm
I hate to give away my secret, but only for you, Darren. Just because I love you… ha ha.
While Akismet will always have false positives, the trick is to install some kind of friendly CAPTCHA (but not one of those gross image things that make you go blind). On top of Akismet, I use WP-Gatekeeper by Eric Meyer of CSS fame.
It lets you set up your own questions with a free form response (not case-sensitive). I will often put in multiple-choice questions like this: “Identify the weapon in this list: asphalt, bacon, cloud, dagger”. Pretty simple for a visitor to fill out.
You can create a bank of questions and change them every so often if you like (although I’ve not had to as of yet).
Despite Eric’s warning, I’ve been using it since WP 2.1 or so without problems (now using on 2.5.1).
Here’s the key, though. 99.99% of all spam, as you know, is bot-generated. It automatically ceases upon install of Gatekeeper. I haven’t had a single one get through even to Akismet since I installed it (and before that I had 84,000+).
So, the only people who wind up in your Akismet queue are real people with a “spam” flag on either their IP or post-content (depending on your rules).
This happened quite recently to a friend of mine. Unknowingly, he thought he’d be clever and use his break at school (he’s a publik skool teacher) and comment on blogs in an overly promotional way about some of his web projects. His quasi-sploggy comments, combined with a static IP address of a publik skool (used for all sorts of web-badness) caused him to wind up on Akismet’s badboy list.
But when he came to post some comments on my blog, I would see, for the first time in months, an actual comment in my Akismet queue. It was no big deal to go in there and approve his comment since there was nothing else in Akismet.
I’d be curious how well this would work on a larger scale blog. I get a decent amount of traffic but nowhere near the volume of you or T/C - yet I hear you both always worried about the amount of Akismet false positives.
The only way for a spam poster to get into Akismet is to do it manually. And because you have such a highly-ranked blog, you might have more than your fair share of such dorky attempts.
In theory, the known spam commenters who manually fill out the reply box and answer the test should still get caught by Akismet, but I’d think that the majority of your Akismet queue would basically turn into a queue of false positives (rather than the reverse as it is now).
Only other point is that the questions you use can be off-putting to foreign visitors with a limited grasp of English. In my way of thinking, considering that is where the majority of spam comes from, I’m all for it. But I did have one recent lady from England get frustrated by getting the question: “The NFL team in Miami?”. She had to look it up online. She could have refreshed the page to get a different question, but I didn’t have instructions to that effect. There’s probably a way to put a little micro-script on the page like the old CAPTCHA images that says “Can’t read this? Get a new image.”, but I haven’t done it yet myself.
Alex D
May 27th, 2008 7:45 pm
I have this problem too. It doesn’t block non-spam commentaries very often but it does and it’s annoying.
jan van Iperen
May 27th, 2008 8:22 pm
I join Duhh in his comment. I think that a fresh and bit different approach like Mollom could be a solution:
Indeed will have to wait for a WP-plugin for this, I really anticipate it.
Fabio Brito - PsychoPenguin
May 27th, 2008 9:47 pm
I´ve just read another case of love and hate with Akismet. Sometimes a Brazilian blogger receives a comment of one guy. This guy writes correctly and doesn´t use the comment box for self-promotion, but Akismet always mark his comments as spam.
The post can be read in http://www.contraditorium.com/2008/05/27/ser-bruno-guedes-o-maior-spammer-brasileiro
(Sorry, it´s Brazilian portuguese only.)
Tech blog
May 27th, 2008 9:53 pm
Is openID a solution for this? Maybe you should have post comments the usual way and whose comments akismet blocks can use openID.
I am not an expert at this but can this be implemented?
Stephen Hopson
May 27th, 2008 10:20 pm
Darren:
I’ve had the same problem with Askimet. A few legits have fallen into the cracks but I’ve managed to catch them b/c my traffic is a bit more manageable than yours. But I love the suggestions you put out there.
I’d definitely want a “whitelist” for those commentators who are truly genuine and legit.
But here’s a question for you. How will you find time to whitelist commentators if they fall thru the cracks and you have a ton of stuff “caught” by Askimet? I suppose if they emailed you a compliant or comment about theirs falling thru the cracks but what about everyone else who doesn’t inform you of this? How will you whitelist them?
Curious?
Soccer Dad
May 27th, 2008 10:53 pm
I’ve been blacklisted by Akismet twice and it drives me nuts to see an in depth comment wasted in the ether because I somehow got on Akismet’s bad side. They’ve always been helpful in removing me, but it’s always tough to tell if you’ve been nailed by Akismet or just held for moderation - I usually find out looking in my own blog logs.
I still use Spam Karma 2, because it provides such a more robust spam fighting suite of tools, including Akismet (via plugin). I hate Sk2 isn’t being actively developed, but it’s been so useful I’ll probably try and tweak it to work with future WP versions if it breaks.
Kathie Thomas, A Clayton's Secretary
May 27th, 2008 10:59 pm
A friend in a blogger’s forum was having this exact problem - all her comments were being listed as spam on various blogger’s blogs. How frustrating.
I’ve received the odd comment here and there in the spam filter but at this stage, not enough to become annoying. What is annoying are the amount of comments that are spam but not filtered as such. Those with multiple links in the comments for example - they should just be automatically deleted as far as I’m concerned.
Enterprising Energy
May 27th, 2008 11:42 pm
In the past I know that I must have lost some decent comments through Akismet on my green blog (as this is one that seems to get targetted for spam more than others for some reason.
but I have also had very short comments left in the past that I was unsure if they were spam or not as they did not seem to relate to the content of the post that was placed in the first place…
I am just off to check my spam filter just now…!
maybe the answer is to sift through the spam comments more often in a day to see if you catch any of them before deleting them for good! (this would probably take ages and ages though).
Enterprising Energy
May 27th, 2008 11:44 pm
my comments always seem to go into moderation on this site too! does this mean that Akismet thinks I am witting spam too?
65 Ways To Get Traffic
May 27th, 2008 11:53 pm
My experience with Akismet on my blog has been a very positive one for sure. Saves me a lot of time deleting junk.
Muscle Post
May 28th, 2008 12:00 am
I’ve run into this problem as well. One of my most frequent commentors is on the Akismet black list still so I have to consistently de-spam his comments. This is unfortunate because it takes a while for me to notice this sometimes so the comments don’t show up for a couple days. They really need to work on that problem, especially “learning” when you tell them it is not spam.
brem
May 28th, 2008 12:07 am
I find Akismet a lot less effective these days. Sure, It stops hundreds of comment spams a day, but every day, at least 2-3-4 go through.
WHY!? :)
taddict
May 28th, 2008 12:15 am
use spam karma - used it for a year now and works perfect
Kirk Warren
May 28th, 2008 1:16 am
Lawrence Salberg - If ProBlogger used Captcha of any kind, i’d never bother posting. Any blog that uses Captcha in any form is automatically one I will never comment on and they typically fall off my radar since I never become a part of the community.
It has just as many false positives in the fact that people just don’t bother commenting when they see it whereas Askimet lets them comment and throws them on the blacklist anyways.
Sangesh
May 28th, 2008 1:48 am
I can just image how many spams you receive, given the popularity of your blog too. In my case also, I received around 2000 spams which were blocked by Akismet for which I’m also thankful to Akismet too. Definitely, it has save a lot of time for me and I certainly believe to other bloggers around the world as well.
But, one thing that I just say that few other bloggers also have commented is that Akismet has to improve its spam detection “engine” because spammers are also humans like any one of us and they also do use intelligence so spam blockers have to work twice as hard to stop any spam.
Cheers to Akismet.
Angelo
May 28th, 2008 3:42 am
I think WP-SpamFree can be a good alternative.
The problem is, not like Akismet, other spam blocker plugins doesn’t have spam moderation as Akismet does so you can’t really be sure either unless you tried every each of them.
Beth Norman
May 28th, 2008 3:53 am
One other reason for this problem can lie with the internet provider, believe it or not. I couldn’t leave comments on several blogs, some I know to be Wordpress, and when I switched from Explorer to Mozilla Fire Fox, all my posts go through. Very strange indeed.
Bob Cornero
May 28th, 2008 4:23 am
I’ve had a good deal of success with Spam Karma 2 on Wordpress. I’m just starting out, so I’m not going to pay for anything like Akisment, and have only had one false positive so far. It’s a great plugin!
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
James Socol
May 28th, 2008 5:52 am
I second Tom Stine’s comment about local white lists. When I read the idea I immediately assumed they would be local.
Akismet has worked well for me–except that it keeps trapping comments from one reader. A white list would let me fix that and I could stop reading through the caught spam every day.
If it doesn’t learn soon, or if I start getting more readers, I’ll probably need to switch to one of the solutions mentioned here.
Anthony a.k.a. OldSchoolSEO
May 28th, 2008 6:03 am
For some reason, I was never an Akismet fan. I have been a Spam Karma 2 user for some time and I love it. Have not had any complaints, but I have my settings lenient to the point where I may get a spam a week (as opposed to the 20+ I would normally get daily) that passes through. I just add it to the spam list which I believe keeps that ip/email blocked.
Stephane Grenier
May 28th, 2008 6:44 am
Could it be that these people have been blacklisted because of spam comments they left on other blogs? In other words askimet doesn’t just learn from your blog, but from ALL blogs. So if you spam one blog it will affect your “spaminess” on other blogs…
Sue
May 28th, 2008 6:56 am
Sometimes I go into moderation on this site when I comment, and sometimes I don’t. It seems I get sent to moderation land a lot more than I used to, but I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that should flag me as spam. I only comment if I feel I can add something, not to just say, “Great post, Darren.”
In fact, I go over every word before I hit submit, to see if there is something that may flag it for Akismet, and have never been able to come up with anything. I will almost guarantee this comment will go to moderation.
Ah well, nothign I say is that critical. :)
Sue
May 28th, 2008 7:07 am
Hmm, the above one went through, after Akismet thought and thought about it. Maybe I should add, “Great post, Darren” to every one I make! :)
Lara says: That might not’ve been due to Akismet, but rather just your comment being held in moderation (Akismet tosses them into a spam section, but WP holds comments for moderation for various reasons itself.) and it took some time for either myself or Darren to get to it to approve it. I have no way of being sure, but just wanted to let you know. :)
Matt
May 28th, 2008 7:13 am
I’m sorry to hear you’ve been seeing some false postives. Just a quick reminder, for anyone here, you can always contact Akismet support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if you notice any persistent problems with Akismet:
http://akismet.com/contact/
Every request is read and answered by a real human being. (If you have a commercial key, we pay even more attention.)
Nick
May 28th, 2008 7:48 am
So far I haven’t had any problems with Akismet. It’s been a real headache saver and I can only think of about 2 or 3 times when something was a false positive or got through when it was spam….and I’ve caught over 9,000 spam comments :)
I know it’s not as huge of site as problogger, but I’m satisfied with it so far. A whitelist idea might be a good idea though especially for sites like this one.
Riccardo
May 28th, 2008 10:20 am
Well, i’ve been blogging just for a couple of months and I’ve not reached a lot of traffic (yet).
But I’m sure that this is the only way u have to prevent “spam comments”, isn’t it?
checking millions of coments would keep anyone who is managing a blog like this a little busy..:D
abhi
May 28th, 2008 12:28 pm
I am facing this problem too. In fact, most of the comments I get on my blog end up in Spam queue and I have to despam them.
Paolo Amoroso
May 28th, 2008 6:05 pm
Does Akismet provide commenters with a specific procedure for reporting false positives? I have filed a support request via their contact form. Is this the correct way?
chris
May 28th, 2008 11:33 pm
they are creating a mollum based plugin for wordpress. at netsensei.nl
lordtime
May 29th, 2008 6:10 am
is it hard just to use a captcha ??? and forget aksimet ?
Sue Walsh
May 29th, 2008 2:12 pm
One of the networks I blog for refuses to use akismet at all becaus of this issue. It means having to go and delete a ton of spam comments, but at least we know none of our legit comments will have to worry about being blacklisted! I personally think a CAPTCHA system works much better than akismet.
Sue
Tieroneads.com
Andy Beard
May 29th, 2008 6:46 pm
I have mentioned in the past I would be willing to pay for a permanent whitelist in Akismet for myself and my primary domains.
Every time Akismet gets included in a top 10 plugins list, 1000s of potential conversations are killed.
SK isn’t perfect, some domains that are otherwise legitimate can tend to get blacklisted over time, for me the biggest problems are google.com and twitter.com which crop up in multiple automated spams.
The best alternative for average users is to just use Akismet as an additional filter for Spam Karma
Jason
May 29th, 2008 11:48 pm
I had a lot of problems with spam. I installed CAPTCHA, and they went away. I’ve had no spam comments since.
CAPTCHA does not work with trackbacks though. So I installed Akismet to handle that. The problem is that the Akismet module for Drupal does not (yet) handle trackbacks, so I still have to check all trackbacks manually.
I’m still a new site. I get about 1 comment a week, maybe 2. I get even fewer trackbacks. But I get as many as 50 spam trackbacks in a day. I’m always afraid that I missed something in there, but what am I going to do? When I become more popular, I can just imagine what the spam will look like then…
Anil
May 30th, 2008 9:19 am
Darren, we hear you loud and clear. Have you checked out our launch today of TypePad AntiSpam? It’s totally free and open source, 100% Akismet API compatible, and TechCrunch says they’ve had better results with it than with Akismet — including fewer false positives. Sounds like it might be right up your alley.
chicago web design
May 30th, 2008 3:02 pm
I’ve never had a problem like that, but last week I had like 6 spam messages from the same guy over and over again. I kept marking it as spam, but Akismet didn’t do anything about it. So that was the only time I’ve been disappointed in Akismet, but other than that he’s done a great job.
Sire
May 30th, 2008 5:34 pm
For some reason I have never used Akismet as Spam Karma was my plugin of choice. So far no problems and no hate mail to say that I have been deleting someones comments, but then I do not get as many comments as you do. Perhaps one day I will. Time will tell
Strong One
May 31st, 2008 12:16 am
Wow..
Good to know, since I’m using Akismet.
Thanks
Stephen
June 1st, 2008 4:42 am
This happens every time with a certain commenter on our blog - but after some digging I found out that the IP she is coming from is on 9 blacklists!
This may be your problem as well…
I would check here: http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
first, and if their IP is listed contact the commenter and have their mail provider remove them from those blacklists first, THEN have their mail provider make sure their Email servers are safe, secure and as spam free as possible (they can use a spam filter like barracuda) to prevent them from being blacklisted again.
I do agree with the Akismet whitelist though.
:)
jessie
June 18th, 2008 8:50 pm
Darren,
you’re not the only one who’s having this kind of dilemma. my blog does not receive as many comments as yours but i too receive the same emails from (sometimes) angry commentators. in fact, i even told my readers that if your comments are caught by akismet, then forgive me because i’m already tired of checking the akismet bin every now and then.
Brent2
June 19th, 2008 3:19 am
I’ve been thinking about it and Askimet has to deal with a LOT more information than most other spam plug-ins. It’s working on virtually all WordPress blogs and is, to a point, dynamic.
Reminds me of when Yahoo first came out with their spamguard (or whatever it’s called). It seemed to be reversed. All my spam was in my Inbox and all my good stuff was in my Spam.
Correcting it took around a month, as it steadily learned. Now it borders on foolproof.
Susan
July 31st, 2008 1:26 am
Ugh, I’m having the same issue. The other day I tried testing a comment with a reputable green site I own and left a comment on one of my other sites and it came up as being spam. I really don’t understand what is going on, but it’s getting on my nerves. I can imagine this may keep a lot of people from commenting, which isn’t what a blog would want.
dan
August 1st, 2008 2:33 pm
my comments are also getting treated as spam on other peoples blogs. I definitely do not spam and never have. My own blog is a decent quality blog that Ive had for over two years.
Whenever I leave a comment on someones blog and put my own web address in the “Website” field almost 99% of the time my comment never appears. Ive resorted to having to comment without putting my blog site down which kind of sucks.
I only comment on articles where I have something to say. I cant understand why akismet treats my comments as spam. Im almost at a point where I dont want to comment anymore because its just a waste of time.
Im also now in the habit of cutting/pasting my comment into notepad before submitting just in case I have to email it using the contact form ..
Lenin Nair
August 29th, 2008 11:34 pm
Indeed it is good to see you are promoting akismet. But I am quite against this tool altogether.
Lately I tried to post one lengthy non spam comment (I never post comment spams anyway) to Techcrunch and what it says is it is blocked ! nothing coming. I went to akismet about it, and am waiting their reply.
I got several times my comments rejected by akismet for no reason whatever. I guess they should make their minds about spams. In fact in your case, Darren, most of those blocked 4 million may not be comment spams.
PS3
September 4th, 2008 5:49 am
I found this article because my blog commenting suddenly appears to have been limited/blacklisted. I would like to find out why but am not sure this will appear!
Scorpaen
October 31st, 2008 1:58 am
this morning i accidently added my own IP to spam list via wordpress. frustrating trying to remove it and seeing a big red bar in my stats telling me i am a possible spammer.
uninstalled the damned plugin.
Andrew
December 15th, 2008 1:08 pm
I have been blacklisted by askimet which is causing me a lot of problems! Most of my returning visitors are people who found my site through commenting on other blogs! Grrrr!
Web Designer
December 16th, 2008 7:29 am
I thank the owner of the blog for sharing such sentiments. I have a website which somehow has been blacklisted by Akismet and I really don’t know what to do about it. I believe myself not be a spammer and I try my best to contribute to each post that I comment on. But somehow I cannot use that domain on any Wordpress blog to make comments. I somehow feel this is unfair.
Wii
December 17th, 2008 8:37 am
I have been looking for answers to this myself! My comments seems to be randomly blocked by different blogs, so I guess this must be the answer to my quarrel! I think I’ll have to write personally to Askimett just like you said to try and sort the problem out, and hopefully they will be able to do something ;)
Thanks a lot for this post by the way, has seriously helped alot!
(Now here’s to hoping that this comment will go through!)
Ana Kitchen
February 6th, 2009 9:36 pm
I’m not yet sure if I’m blacklisted already. But its really annoying when you try to become part of a conversation and your comment doesn’t go through.
Sometimes a post so moved me and I write a beautiful comment expressing my emotions and all, only to see that it’s been ignored. It was frustrating really.
For this post I’m not even sure if it will go through, if not then I have wasted my breath yet once again. If it goes through then I hope that blog owners will try to be more considerate and stop flagging everyone as spam. A delete is sufficient I think if you don’t like the comment, right?
Lara Kulpa
February 7th, 2009 1:39 am
Ana - You’re missing the entire point about Akismet and other anti-spam plugins for blogs.
The blog OWNER is not the person flagging someone as a spammer.
It’s the PLUGIN that does it automatically, and then the blog OWNER has to go in and approve the comment.
Your comments rarely, completely disappear… it just takes a while before they show up. Don’t take it personally! It could be because you’ve written something that’s too long, you have never left a comment before on that particular site, or you’ve used certain words/phrases that set off the owner’s filter.
Really… calm down about it, don’t take it personal because it’s NOT, and just wait a bit to give the blog owner time to put your comment through. You have NO IDEA how many spam comments are on this site every day… I’m telling you it’s in the SEVERAL THOUSANDS. Out of that several thousand that are truly spam, you want me to let them all go through and then delete them after the fact? Sorry… doesn’t work that way.
Kirsten Mason
February 16th, 2009 7:52 am
I found this post using Google. I can’t be sure if i’m blacklisted by Askimet or some other spam blocking software. Is there a reliable way of finding out what spam list a person is on? Thanks for any help.
Scott Roberts
March 1st, 2009 3:38 pm
I’m another person who for some some has gotten flagged by Akismet as spam within the past month.
Tracy
April 1st, 2009 2:00 am
I am sure my site is on the askimet list and I am not sure what I have done wrong.
I think there are some bloggers who are quick to just mark things as spam because they want the comment gone on their site. I do not think they realize that it blocks on millions of other sites too.
As for contacting askimet directly that does work but only once. A friend of mine had to do this and he was told that was the only time they would remove him from the list.
My question is what would stop a competitor from using your url on really spammy comments just to get you blocked.
Scott Roberts
April 1st, 2009 10:11 am
Tracy,
That is a BIG worry and a huge problem which should be addressed. There are a lot of things that we dread competitors doing which are myths, such as being banned from search engines by spamming too much them with your website URL, or them having your site linked from link farm sites in order to make your PageRank drop. But this is a legitimate way of how your competition can get your site blocked from ever appearing in blog comments.
Gary
April 1st, 2009 11:06 am
My site is being blocked by Askimet as well.I have left only a few comments with my url and somehow I got blocked. Not cool Askimet.
Someone should start a business getting companies/persons competitors ( other legitimate people/companies) marked as spam by Askimet or Google etc, because it just seems so easy to do!
/sarcasm
Ryan
April 23rd, 2009 3:04 am
Akismet blocks genuine commenters and even the webmasters of their own blog. This has happened to me. I am suffering using it, not a great tool. It follows a pretty lame algorithm :-
Comments will be closed off on this post 90 days after it was published. Apologies to those this impacts but it's a regrettable and temporary measure to combat a growing comment spam problem. See our most recent posts where you can comment here.