Akismet and Disappearing Comments
I’ve been using Akismet for months now, and I have been nothing but happy until last night, when I found that some perfectly good comments were never posted. On reviewing my last 15 days spam, I found all four of the missing comments and “de-spammed” them, but unless the user had e-mailed me, I might never have realized there was a problem. I would be very, very loathe to get rid of Akismet. It’s a lifesaver. I am wondering, however, if anyone else has had such problems, and if so, what solutions they might suggest.
To review my not-very-public comments policy, I do not delete comments unless they are clearly spam, illegal, or threaten a family friendly rating, i.e. excessively use obscene language. That means I don’t remove off-topic comments, so long as they have some content and thus don’t fall under the spam heading. I don’t remove comments because they are discourteous, including to me. You can call me an idiot, a liar, or whatever your heart desires right here on my blog. Just avoid doing it with four letter words, and keep it within legal boundaries.
If you have made comments that should have appeared, but have not, e-mail me and let me know when and on what post.
I’ve had the same problem, but only recently. I now check Askimet every few days for legimimate comments. I usually find one or two.
I use Akismet also – in fact I even paid a few bucks for the commercial license. It’s usually great, with no problems at all. But I have noticed a HUGE uptick in the amount of spam I get in the last month, and maybe Akismet tweaked something to capture more of it. I hadn’t thought of that until some of my comments were captured. 🙂
It’s a possibility. All I can say is that the few comments recently caught are the only false positives Akismet has produced. I’m very impressed with them. I’ll be reviewing the caught spam very quickly off and on just to make sure, however.