Has Akismet become less effective?
Akismet is an anti-spam plugin for WordPress, developed by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. It uses the community aspect to recognize and weed out spam. ‘Community aspect’ here refers to the fact that Akismet learns about spam by collecting data of comments that have been marked as spam.
Akismet has been much praised, and is included with the default WordPress core files. Popular blogs have had millions of spam comments blocked by Akismet (TechCrunch, for example), and bloggers have invariably praised Akimet.
Until recently, Akismet was perfect for me in that no spam slipped through to the main comments area. However, over the last few weeks, I have noticed that an increasing number of spam comments have slipped through. This is one of the reasons why I have enabled comments moderation here at TechZilo (so if you comment, the comment will not appear until I approve it).
I am not alone in this Akismet failure, though, because several fellow bloggers have reported similar problems as well. Paul Stamatiou voiced his concerns on Twitter, and several others said similar things too.
If you are a blogger, in the recent past, have you had problems with Akismet? Or as a commentator, have you had problems like comments being falsely classified as spam? I’d like to know whether these are isolated incidents, or whether something is wrong with Akismet.
On second thoughts, it might be the right time to try out Defensio, an anti-spam plugin. I know I will.
Nirmal said on April 9th, 2008
Few of my regular commentators were caught in Akismet in the past few weeks.
Blog Scandal said on April 9th, 2008
Why is your blog less noticed these days? I don’t see legtimate comment for your recent blogs…
Binny V A said on April 10th, 2008
The same thing is happening to me as well - I’m getting way too much spam comments. If you try out Defensio, let us know how it goes.
Post authorSumesh said on April 10th, 2008
@Nirmal: Yep, its becoming irritating for me too.
@Binny VA: Will write some feedback after taking out Defensio for a spin.
@all: Brajeshwar buzzed me through Twitter that Akismet’s commercial license ($5 per month) is still good. Maybe they’re reducing the quality of free version so that we’ll switch over?
@Blog Scandal: I was away from home, and put all comments in the moderation queue, and to be displayed only after my approval. Again, one of the reasons was that too many spam slipped through earlier.
Madhur Kapoor said on April 11th, 2008
I have been facing problems with Akismet as well. It lets some spam comments pass through. Let me know about your experiance with Defensio.
Matt said on April 12th, 2008
There have been no recent changes to Akismet that would cause the problems you’re describing, if you’re seeing a mistake rate higher than 1 in 1000 there’s probably something wrong with the setup. Have you contacted Akismet support yet?
Post authorSumesh said on April 12th, 2008
@Matt: Will be contacting Akismet support soon, thanks for the tip-off.
Josh said on April 12th, 2008
@Matt: If you still believe Akismet’s performance is 99.9%, your putting your head in the sand. Sumesh is not the only one having problems with Akismet. your performance is more around 90-95% these days. it’s been going downhill for the past year or so. people all over the place are complaining about how bad akismet is getting, so please stop acting like nothing is happening. It’s not just a few isolated cases, *everybody* I know is having these performance problem. I think you’d be better off coming clean about the issues you are facing, i’m sure people would understand.
i’m still using Akismet because that’s what ive always been using, but if the problems continue I will be forced to look for something else. akismet eats a lot of my good comments (maybe most) and lets many spam through.
Post authorSumesh said on April 13th, 2008
@Josh: Thanks for the heads-up, I think its time the folks at Akismet took notice.
Siddharth said on April 27th, 2008
Yeah I too believe Askimet is less powerful now
only 1 or 2 comments received on my blog were shown as NORMAL
others were sent to the spam box and were very fine
So i need to check the spam thingy everytime now
Post authorSumesh said on April 28th, 2008
@Siddharth: As a sidenote, I’d like to remind that even Defensio (which is actually better, from my experience) does quarantine legit comments as spam. They’re bots, after all
Rob said on April 28th, 2008
For several months now, nothing has been showing up in my Akismet spam comments, but the reason is that I also was using the plugins Bad Behavior and WP-SpamFree. Before I started using the other two, obvious spam was getting through as normal comments. With Bad Behavior and WP-SpamFree activated, I saw no spam. But that’s also a problem - Bad Behavior and WP-SpamFree both tell you how many spam comments they’ve killed, but who knows if they were also killing legitimate comments?!
I’ve been using Defensio for several days now and have deactivated both BB and WP-SF. Defensio has caught all the spam, plus I can view it to make sure that it really is spam.
Post authorSumesh said on April 29th, 2008
@Rob: Using multiple plugins for the same task can make serious database loads, and your decision is correct - Defensio sports a 97% accuracy, which is remarkable for a plugin that’s not as popular as Akismet or as supported.