What is wrong with Akismet?
ADVERTISEMENTSFor the past half an hour I have been getting 2-5 Spam comments every minute. This same thing had happened a few months back when Akismet was down.
I was thinking of using CAPTCHAs to fight spam but this post by Mark which gives some good points about why they might not be the best solution for stopping comment spam on a blog made me decide not to use them.
Here’s a few of his main points:
- Any extra work required to comment is likely to deter some people from commenting at all.
- Sometimes the images are so distorted they’re almost impossible to read, even with perfect eyesight.
- CAPTCHAs are hackable. Spammers are smart, they can get past many of our barriers.
- Visually impaired users are completely excluded (although there are audio CAPTCHAs available now).
- Dyslexics have a hard time too.
- There are better and less intrusive solutions.
Are you you getting Spam too every minute? Also what is your opinion on CAPTCHAs? Do you think using them will reduce comments?
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Posted on December 8th, 2006 | Category: General |
Stefan Julius
December 8, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Hello John there are running around a lot of discussions in the web about Captchas at this moment.
I have here an article from ProBlogger.net
http://www.problogger.net/arch.....-captchas/
Maybe this will help u to find a solution.
Vivek
December 8, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I like Deep’s (http://www.whoisdeep.com/) style
ex. “Please add 10 and 1″.
following the K.I.S.S principle
and about captchas .. those who have time do watch this video about ‘human computation’
it also gives one trick hackers play to bypass the captcha system
RinzeWind
December 8, 2006 at 3:54 pm
I’m having precisely the same problem you’ve reported. Akismet might very well be down right now, but there’s nothing posted on their blog at this moment.
Billy Halsey
December 8, 2006 at 4:05 pm
I’ve also noticed that Akismet seems to be down at the moment, even though their “live spam zeitgeist” is tracking spam. There’s nothing on the Akismet website to indicate that they’re aware of the problem.
But, like you, my blog is also being hit with spam that’s leaking through. For a momentary stop-gap measure, I’m doing what I did the last time Akismet died: Requiring all commenters to have an account and login, only until Akismet is bck up. After that, I’ll turn the feature off again.
Niko
December 8, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Another echo here. Have got around 50 spam comments in the last hour…
Aqui
December 8, 2006 at 5:37 pm
I think Captchas are not the best solution.
As you said, they’ll make users not to post a comment. And perhaps spam will not be avoided.
But if spam is raising, there won’t be another option.
JohnTP
December 8, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Try this wordpress plugin to prevent comment spam.
listikal
December 8, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Akismet is still doing an excellent job for me.
JW
December 8, 2006 at 10:05 pm
I have been having the same sort of problems once in a while the last few hours. When I surf to http://rest.akismet.com/, it returns an error, while normally this should return at least something.
Deep
December 8, 2006 at 11:52 pm
hmm now a days spammers have become really smart… I have math plugin enabled and I still get the spam. We need some stronger plugin.
Regards,
Deep
JohnTP
December 9, 2006 at 12:05 am
Deep- I just disabled comments in older posts and have not received much comment spam ever since
Deep
December 9, 2006 at 12:07 am
Yes but then it doesnt work for all the blogs. Take example of mine, I need comments to be enabled in old posts because lot of people come searching for specific terms on my blog and they post comment there
So some kind of better comment posting verification tool / plugin will be cool.
Madhur Kapoor
December 9, 2006 at 10:12 am
CAPTCHAs doesnt seem a good soln …. as a coommenter i myself feel that it can sometimes discourage readers from posting ….math plugin seems a good option .
Shivaranjan
December 9, 2006 at 6:46 pm
I use a simple plugin called spam karma 2 which effectively kills spam. Till now I have not had any problems with those spammers. Another problem with akismet is that it categorizes many of the readers comments as spam.
Sridhar
December 11, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Another vote for Spam Karma.
Chris Lodge
December 16, 2006 at 1:19 am
I’ve found the Bad Behavior to be infallible so far. Has stopped 250 spam attacks in the first month, not one let through. Highly recommended.