Deleted Akismet, still getting false positives

The comment history may include some information; it’s at the bottom of the “Edit Comment” page.

If there’s nothing helpful there, can you post the full list of plugins you still have enabled?

Hi, thanks for the reply. Are you saying if I click “edit comment” on the action menu under a comment, on the resulting edit page I should see something about comment history? I’m not seeing that. Is this something I need to activate or otherwise invoke? Thanks for any info. MTN

Here is my plugin stack, nothing there that has anything to do with spam filtering:

Ad Inserter – Version 2.2.2 Active
Any Mobile Theme Switcher – Version 2.1 Active
Comment Notifier – Version 2.3.0 Active
Disable Embeds – Version 1.3.0 Active
Disable Google Fonts – Version 1.3 Active
GA Google Analytics – Version 20170731 Active
Heartbeat Control – Version 1.0.3 Active
Kebo – Twitter Feed – Version 1.5.12 Active
Quiz – Version 1.3.1 Active
Wordfence Security – Version 6.3.18 Active
WP Featherlight – Version 1.1.0 Active
WP Nav Menu Cache – Version 2.1 Active
WPS Hide Login – Version 1.1.7

You’re right that nothing there looks problematic. Comment Notifier might be involved, but I only say that because it’s the only one that obviously has some connection to comments.

You may want to start disabling different plugins for a couple days each and see if the problem persists in order to narrow down the culprit.

Also, check whether there are any plugins listed in your “Must Use” section on the plugins page (/wp-admin/plugins.php?plugin_status=mustuse). Those are plugins that are added by an administrator and can’t be disabled (without permission).

I’m going to mark as resolved, since it’s definitely not Akismet-related, but I will continue to check on this thread if you find any more information.

Thanks so much, really helps as I can now be pretty sure it’s not Akismet. I did a lot of googling on this, mainly trying to find out what logic is built into WordPress that could put a comment in the Spam box, without Akismet. I couldn’t find anything. Anyone? Even a hint would get me on the right path to solving this.

Moreover, anyone know of something that could go in wp-function.php that would simply eliminate the spam box?

Thanks, MTN

I’m not aware of a way to remove the Spam folder entirely. The Comment Blacklist in the discussion options is the only thing I know of in core WordPress that will put something in spam. If it’s not that, the best way is still to disable your plugins one at a time until it stops happening; if you find out which plugin is causing it, let me know and I can dig into it.

Thanks Christopher, it’s acting like I have something in Comment Blacklist, while I do not have anything in there! Crazy.

Problem with troubleshooting this is I can’t replicate the behavior, it just seems to happen randomly, though perhaps there is commonality in the spam boxed posts I can eventually figure out.

Fixing this is a top priority here, so I’ll get back here soon and let you guys know how it goes. Very frustrating behavior on the part of WordPress.

MTN

mistake, please delete this

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by mountainguy2.

I tested my Comment Blacklist, it does not place comments in Spam box, but places them in Trash. Is that normal?

You’re right; they used to go into spam, but it was changed to put them in Trash instead.

Hey @mountainguy2, sorry to jump on an old thread but I’m wondering if you resolved this issue, and if so what the cause actually was? I Googled my issue and this was the first thing that popped up that resembles what I’m experiencing (no Akismet, no WordPress blacklist settings, but 1 reader’s comments still being marked as spam).

It’s hard to troubleshoot as I can’t predict when the guy will comment and it only seems to be happening when he comments, but he’s commented from a few different IPs, no links in his comments at all, and there’s no words or anything set up in WordPress to blacklist anything.

Looking at your list of active plugins my hunch is it could be something to do with Wordfence as that’s the only plugin we share, but I’d love to know if you ever got to the bottom of it.

@kazango: Have that individual contact us directly and we’ll run some tests to see why they’re getting flagged:

https://akismet.com/contact/

Have them fill the form out and choose “I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake.” and we’ll be happy to help. We need the individual in question to contact us as we can only run our tests with the person being affected.

On your end, keep marking those comments as not spam to help Akismet learn.

I hope that helps!

David, I did resolve my issue. It turned out that Wordfence Security plugin has an option “Advanced Comment Spam” filter, this uses a variety of IP blacklists. The comments I was getting false positives on were being sent using various VPN services that utilized junky IP numbers that had persisted on blacklists, and were thus marked as spam by Wordfence. Needless to say I’m not impressed, but now that I know what causes the problem I’m leaving the Wordfence filter enabled for security as I don’t get many comments blocked, just a few.

So, it was WORDFENCE ! I hope this helps.

Lou