I use Akismet on my Wordpress site to catch spam. At first I was very impressed with it. When I first installed it (a few weeks after it was announced), it worked very well; it would catch all spam and let all ham through. I’ve made sure to have the latest version of the Akismet plugin for Wordpress installed. Since 99% of the spam determining is done on the akismet server side, there haven’t been any client side updates in some time. My Akismet setup has caught 25,521 spam comments so far.

But recently, it has been misbehaving on my site and the sites of some of my friends that use it. I get 5-10 spam comments a week that Akismet thinks is ham, and every once in awhile I’ll get a ham comment that Akismet thinks is spam. Then it will place SOME items in moderation which are VERY obviously spam (100+ links).

It’s annoying, and I wish Akismet would get it together. For now, I’ll be patient and keep flagging comments accordingly. After all, there’s still nothing better…

Edit: I found an announcement for Defensio, which could be an Akismet replacer. I requested information and perhaps inclusion in the beta. This sounds promising.