June 1st, 2006
b5media, Akismet and Spam Karma 2
b5media - a Wordpress-powered consumer blog network - recently announced that it would be using Akismet for its anti-spam efforts through an Akismet Enterprise License.
The news itself is pretty insignificant, relatively that is. But it is interesting to see b5media opt for the pay-for Akismet vs. the absolutely free Spam Karma 2, which based on my experience is an entirely valid alternative to Akismet. In fact, I use both combined through the Spam Karma 2 Akismet plugin. Double the plugins, twice less the comment spam, eh?
However, the fact that SK2 is completely free could have been the problem in itself. Akismet, being a commercial product (for commercial entities), guarantees reliability, and in a worst case scenario, premium support. And b5media, being the full-scale commercial blog network, surely requires that sort of peace of mind (or according to Blogging Pro, recognition as “a serious business venture”).
Well, at least that’s what I think the 200 smackers a month (for the Akismet Enterprise license) represents.
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61 Comments
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:02 am
To be honest, we tried SK2 (and every other plugin) and spam still got through. It might have only been 10%, but 10% x 150 blogs is just a crazy amount of spam to deal with. Especially with last week’s barrage where we were hit with nearly 500K pieces of spam across the network.
We don’t know if Akismet’ll be better, but early indications are positive.
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:11 am
I see. But over my trials with Akismet for around 100+k pieces of spam, it wasn’t very successful for me, with not only spam getting in, but also (some) false positives now and then.
But hopefully it works for you guys, because with that sort of spam volume…
P.S.: Perhaps you guys could post your results with Akismet a few months down the road? I’m sure it’d be a good indicator of how it’ll fare in such a large-scale and varied environment.
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:54 am
Feel free to ping us in a few months to find out. So far, it’s caught more than 12,000 pieces of spam with no false positives that we’ve seen (though we’re keeping a very close eye on that as it’s something we’ve individually had issues with before).
June 2nd, 2006 at 8:27 am
Also Akismet and SK2 are not mutually exclusive — there is a SK2 plugin for Akismet if you want to stick with Spam Karma but still get that extra protection.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Matt, totally. We’ve decided to use Akismet on its own for now. If it works well enough vs running both’ll be rocking.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:12 pm
I’d like to chime in here as to why I pushed for Askimet over SK2 (in b5media), the thing I don’t like about SK2 is the use of a captcha, captcha’s discriminate against those with visual disabilities (and lets face it, with some other Captcha’s, those with 20/20 vision as well!). I’ve had a lot of support over the years from the visually impared community on my stance against captcha’s when I was writing The Blog Herald, and it’s not something I’m going to change my mind on now. Why would you implement a tool that actually prohibits some of your readers participating in the discussion?
Sorry, I know SK2 is a decent plugin, but utilising a Captcha should be a no-no in any circumstances.
June 2nd, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Hmm. Duncan, in most cases, SK2 doesn’t even reach the CAPTCHA stage as CAPTCHA is only a last resort against comments with indeterminable threat, i.e. almost spam or almosy false positive.
And even if the commenter in question cannot answer the CAPTCHA, i.e. visually-impaired, the comment will go into moderation (which you can then approve manually).
So, I really do not see how the CAPTCHA in SK2 should be a problem. In fact, it is a plus as it largely prevents false positives (based on my own experience only).
Furthermore, the CAPTCHA in SK2 can be disabled if you wish, or if you do not happen not to have any problems with false positives. In fact, I’ve turned it off on some of my blogs since, like you, I do dislike CAPTCHA.
With what I know about Akismet and SK2, I would say that it is a negative point that Akismet lacks a backup solution against false positives. But I’ve heard that many Akismet users have experienced very low false positive rates as Akismet’s system improves (not me though). So, I can understand that CAPTCHA might be redundant here.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Someone else below asked this already about antispam scripts.
I am getting nailed with Spam on my website mails and in our blog website - now its offline too
much spam. Is there anyway to stop this? If not, there really isn’t any point in leaving it up
and active. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for help, Keep up the good work. Greetings from Poland
December 12th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Spam karma work good
December 15th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
Ok, well… It didn’t matter to me, but since this site looked very family and all, I thought I’d say something about it. Maybe you didn’t know.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:58 am
I dont know but why i don find such informative and profitable blogs so often,I suspect blogging world is becoming so small that we cant find such lucrative blogs like this one.
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:52 am
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:03 am
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July 26th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Rejsy morskie
July 29th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Matt, totally. We’ve decided to use Akismet on its own for now. If it works well enough vs running both’ll be rocking.
July 31st, 2007 at 9:01 am
Interesting…there are several spam comments on this page. That bothers me. Honestly, I don’t mind captcha. And if the user is a registered user of the blogging service captcha doesn’t even come up anyway, so why be so defensive about it? And captcha is not a discriminatory program. If you are visually impaired you click the button to HEAR the code, so again, why be so defensive about it? And I happen to hate Akismet. I have tried to leave comments several times on the b5media site and have been blocked as a spam so I have given up. I think it’s ridiculous that all of my comments have to be held for moderation, especially when I often visit the site. I would much rather answer a question or submit to captcha than be flagged as a spam when I’m not. Why do people use systems and then pretend that everything is all hunky dory when obviously it is not?
July 31st, 2007 at 1:09 pm
It’s very good article. Great site with very good look and perfect information.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:45 am
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August 16th, 2007 at 7:47 am
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August 20th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Automaty samosprzedające
August 20th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Regały jezdne
August 20th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Rejsy morskie po morzu Śródziemnym
August 21st, 2007 at 12:35 am
In my recent experience Akismet had over 1400 comments marked as spam from the last week.
Akismet has caught over 12,000 spam comments since I installed it. But I’ve not been keeping on top of the list this week. Unfortunately it is impossible to check for false positives once you have more than 150 spam comments. The great thing however is that you can check each box for each comment. You can push the “not spam” button.
However, the only other action is to delete all the comments that Akismet has determined are spam. But if you have legitimate comments that are not in the most recent 150, you cannot see them to rescue them.
How can I solve this?
September 25th, 2007 at 6:28 am
Produkcja szaf i regałów
September 25th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Wybory do sejmu 2007
September 28th, 2007 at 6:13 am
realy nice site, great article, thanks for informations
October 1st, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Akismet has proven as the best anti spam tool!
October 4th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
Akismet for president, Spamkarma wont prevent anything….
October 8th, 2007 at 2:39 am
Klorane - apteka internetowa
October 8th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Odlewnia - Przemyśl
October 8th, 2007 at 2:41 am
Reklama Rzeszów
October 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Akismet is very useful tool. I use it in couple with my own anti spam module and I don’t have a spam problem.
October 28th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
The Information you provide is useful.
However, judging from the amount of Spam in your comments, it looks like you personally are averse to using Akismet.
October 28th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more. http://www.fitness-am.de
November 22nd, 2007 at 3:31 am
Good article
November 29th, 2007 at 12:53 am
It’s very good article.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:22 am
Furthermore, the CAPTCHA in SK2 can be disabled if you wish, or if you do not happen not to have any problems with false positives. In fact, I’ve turned it off on some of my blogs since, like you, I do dislike CAPTCHA.
January 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am
Automaty samosprzedające
January 17th, 2008 at 3:40 am
This blog has done a very great job to make his blog more informative and more discussable but unfortunately everthing is same here that more than 80% in this and other blogs post their comments for making spam!!!, so i will really all this spam links to google band tool..
January 19th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Thnaks for the article
January 23rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Thanks for the interesting article here. Greetings
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Aksimet looks like a very good solution.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:26 am
sd
April 28th, 2008 at 5:52 am
good site
April 28th, 2008 at 5:53 am
thanks
April 29th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for akismet.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Nice site
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 am
It’s very good article.
May 18th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Great and excellent article it’s realy helpful. Thanks again.
May 18th, 2008 at 7:34 am
It’s very good article.
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May 18th, 2008 at 7:35 am
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May 19th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Thanks for the interesting article
May 19th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Is Akismet still connected with WP blogs? From my account, I’ve seen it along with my API. Is it possible to turn off or turn on the filtering action or function of Akismet once in a while?
May 27th, 2008 at 8:41 am
good site
May 27th, 2008 at 8:42 am
thank you
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 pm
thanks
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June 30th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
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