Akismet Failing

It is without a doubt that one of the few anti-spam measures in place on my blog that has stopped me disabling comments is Akismet. The service catches literally thousands of spam comments on a daily basis. The problem is that while I used to get absolutely no spam through to my moderation queue such that all I had to decide was if I wanted a comment published, I’m now getting spam through as well and I’m having to mark various items as spam for submission to Akismet.

Critics will no doubt point out that this quantity of spam can’t be numerous and they’d be right, but as the solution didn’t previously let any through and Akismet is a continuously evolving anti-spam solution its worrying that its effectively getting worse over time as it means spam is evolving better than the defenses of Akismet.

Spam is without a doubt one of the biggest issues on the world wide web and while it hasn’t yet caused me to disable access to anything on my sites, if too much spam gets through to my blog moderation queue then I will be disabling comments. You might argue that disabling a feature is letting them win, but my take on it is that if I end up reading spam then I’m letting the spammers win because they have reached me as a reader. Likewise if there is a possibility that the comments might reach my blog then I’d be letting the spammers win by allowing the comments to reach a global audience.

Here’s hoping that Akismet doesn’t get any worse at blocking spam, or even gets better, as that way the comments can keep on flowing and I can be safe in the knowledge that I’m not in any way helping spammers reach their audience.

 

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2 Comments

  1. weee recycling Said,

    October 30, 2007 @ 6:46 pm

    Is this spam?
    Many bloggers remove dissent and tell their conscience it was spam!
    I’ve read a number of your posts and found stuff of interest, but no link to your portfolio of web design which I would be interested to look at.
    I also question your wisdom in subscribing to the view that the person paying is always right – morally objectionable and when it come to the www results in some terrible sites.
    Back to the initial question – I’ve linked a local non-profit website with, what I guess, is a keyword; but I’ve spent 20 minutes looking and considering your site. Will we have a dialogue or will you bin this and move your tally to 52,287…

  2. Kieran Said,

    October 31, 2007 @ 9:50 am

    No, your comment is not spam as you are a real person with something to say about what I have written. The fact you have linked to a website you like/run/have something to do with is almost irrelevant.

    I’d also like to point out that I never elect not to publish comments that don’t agree with what I say. The only time I wouldn’t publish a comment is if someone was attacking me or anyone else in a personal way rather than with reference to my article. This has never happened and thus I have never not published a comment from a reader.

    Where have I said that the person paying is always right? I would have thought my acute interest and support for free and open source software would counter that idea for a start….

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