Overactive Spam Filters
Last month, Abe Olandres of the Blog Herald wrote something about relying too much on comment spam filters. In this case, it’s particularly Akismet, Automattic’s spam filter that comes packaged with WordPress. The issue with Akismet is that the software works in conjunction with a central server (Akismet’s), and everytime this server hiccups, the whole blogging world gets tons of comment spam (at least those that use WordPress, that is).
Thing is, weak spam filtering is not the only problem bloggers have. What’s equally frustrating is that spam filters can sometimes over-react and catch even the legitimate ones (a.k.a. false positives). I have personally experienced having to wade through thousands of spam comments in order to approve two or three ones. And that sucks! That’s even more tiring than having to use WordPress’ mass-edit mode to delete the spammy comments that were let through. When manually looking for spam among legit comments, you at least know what it looks like—too many links, adult-related keywords, etc.—thus it’s easier to filter out. But when you’re looking for legit comments among the spam ones, it’s a bit harder to pinpoint.
For me, both weak and overactive spam filters are equally as crappy as spam itself. But then again, I guess there has to be some compromise. It’s either you have protection or not.
What do you think?