Blog comments vs Akismet
WordPress uses Akismet as a defence against comment spam, and for the most part it does a good job. It is supposed to put everything deemed “spam” into a spam queue, where it can either be confirmed as such or published as a legitimate comment. At the bottom of the WordPress stats page, there’s a proud banner that says “Akismet has protected your site from nnn spam comments.”
The problem here is that sometimes nnn increases without new messages appearing in the spam queue – i.e., the comments are lost forever. If they were indeed spam I don’t care, but if they were legitimate comments I most certainly do care. I’m certainly not alone in experiencing this.
In a nutshell, if you’ve posted a comment and it’s not showed up, I’m not ignoring you – it’s just disappeared over Akismet’s event horizon, never to return. If you want to get in touch, you can always email me – alec dot waters at dataline dot co dot uk.
Alec Waters is responsible for all things security at Dataline Software, and can be emailed at alec.waters(at)dataline.co.uk
