For the past few days I’ve had some real trouble trying to comment on other blogs. I would make a comment, and it would seem like nothing happened. No “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” message would show up. Same story even with blogs I’ve had previously approved comments on.
I started to suspect that for some reason my comments weren’t getting through because I was being flagged by Akismet’s spam filter. I confirmed this suspicion this morning when I left a comment on a friend’s blog, and they informed me that I was indeed getting flagged by Akismet.
Remember, Akismet is used on thousands upon thousands of blogs to stop comment spam. Every time I would make a comment, it would be relegated “Akismet Spam” page. People don’t check this page as frequently as their non-spam comments. Although some may check it from time to time for the occasional false positive.
No, I didn’t overreact and start drafting some massive “Why you shouldn’t use Akismet” blog post. I simply posted this tweet and just a couple hours later, I received this response from Mark Riley of Automattic. This totally caught me by surprise, as I was definitely not expecting this issue to be resolved by a quick tweet.
So why was I marked as spam in the first place? I have no clue, other than the fact it had something to do with my URL (http://www.themelab.com). I’m just glad it could be resolved so quickly. Thanks Akismet!
Anyways, how can one contact you to do...
Hmm, does that explain why when I just left you a comment for another post it wasn’t even put into moderation? - I suppose we can only test here again, and hope that you do check out the ‘SPAM’ received before you delete it all!
Thanks
Mark
Hey Mark, you weren’t flagged as spam. That’s a bug with the Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin I use here. I just approved both your comments so you won’t be moderated here any more.
Cool, thanks for the confirmation!
You’ll soon not even need that plugin though with 2.7 just around the corner! I can’t wait, and am personally looking forward to it! - Thinking about finally sorting my design out once and for all!
Glad Akismet hasn’t flagged me though, I bet it was a little embarrassing to say the least!
Thanks
Mark
I’ve often worried that I’m deleting non-spam comments in my blog that are marked by AKISMET, but usually it’s pretty clear that they are junk and totally unrelated to anything my blog is about. I check daily but, yes, I guess some people might not check! Funny, I didn’t even think of the danger that my comments might end up as spam.
I’m glad that I read your post - now I’ll keep it in mind, too.
My comment still don’t show up on both wordpress and akismet enabled websites. Both of them do not even bothered to reply to my query and was left unresolved. Whenever i include my website url in the url field the post stills shows discarded and the comment would never show up. It’s hampering my blogging experience and i don’t feel like commenting anymore coz i feel am being avoided and i do not get anything in return (not even visibility for my site).
It’s such a shame, all i can post is on just blogspot or typepad. Thank god blogspot doesn’t need cruel akismet for that matter, only comment moderation does the entire work and atleast there’s an assurity that the comment would be published since it doesn’t has anything spammy in it and blogspot is so userfriendly too. I guess wordpress would be missing a lot of users if it continues this way.
Thanks Google for having blogspot
Ive the same exact experience - and have no idea why.. Is it due to the website, ip or what? I dont type comments that are not related to the subject nor spam all over. Really makes it hard to participate in many blogs.
@Bilety lotnicze: I’m not quite sure. For me, I think it was my website URL, although like I said in the post, it was quickly resolved. For the record, your comment wasn’t flagged as spam when you submit it here.