Comments on: Where did all the comments go?

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:13:23 +0000

Walt, et al., Akismet itself is a bit unsure whether you should use more than one spam blocker. This from their faq:

“Should I use any other spam plugins?”

“We ask that you turn off all other spam plugins as they may reduce the effectiveness of Akismet. Besides, you shouldn’t need them anymore! But if you are investigating alternatives, we recommend checking out Bad Behavior and Spam Karma, both which integrate with Akismet nicely.”

So the answer is, don’t do it unless you kinda feel like it.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go refresh Meredith’s previous post so I can see how the train wreck is progressing.

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:32:01 +0000

I’ve had to rescue comments from Spam Karma 2 once in a while, usually because (I think) they had too many links or used exclamation points or otherwise somehow triggered spam. Fortunately, LISHost’s server settings seem to be tight enough that the volume of Spam Karma catches is back to reasonable.

I would wonder about using two spam tools simultaneously: Could that be causing problems? (I know, I’m making a probably-useless analogy with PC software, where using two antivirus tools is a great way to freeze the computer entirely. )

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:39:31 +0000

If you recently upgraded to WP 2.0.6 there was also an Akismet update that may have had some impact. Or not. It’s hard to tell. I was getting a ton of comment spam (caught by Akismet) while LISHost was getting hammered and then it stopped. As soon as I upgraded I started getting nailed in massive quantities again (again being caught, thankfully). I doubt the two are really related, but there may still have been some changes in Akismet so that it now catches things it shouldn’t.

But then your idea seems more likely.