The Sorry State of Anti-Spam Plugins

I have tried several anti spam measures in my days. Most of them wreck my comments option (especially SpamKarma…). I currently rely on a combination of Bad Behavior and Akismet. I don’t have to moderate my comments, since the spam that Bad Behavior doesn’t catch, is put in the spam queue of Akismet. Never once did I have a comment published that was spam, only once a comment was put in the spam queue that was an actual comment. I’m not unhappy with the way things go.

Glad to hear that you’re happy but the majority of WP bloggers are struggling with the anti-spam plugins out there. For example, take this recent post in this forum: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/266352?replies=3

Again and again, SK2 is hands down the favorite solution. So why don’t developers who spend their time coding these alternative solutions just bring up the existing SK2 code (GNU license) to work with the current version of WP?

I’m puzzled why an amazing solution has been left by the wayside and forgotten.

I’m with gangleri — same combo works well for me.

I’d be curious to have you quantify your phrase “vast majority” though. Not that I mind being a happy minority, but are you just counting unhappy posts here in the forums or actually polling all the WP users? Could be an interesting research project to follow as you’ll get some really big numbers!

Chris,
no, I haven’t done a poll but I’ve read many complaints about it. And it would be difficult to compare SK2 with today’s offerings since to do an apples to apples comparison we would have to jump into a time machine and go back to a time when SK2 was *the* anti-spam plugin used by wordpress bloggers. Since it was not updated and left to fend on its own by Dr. Dave, others have come on the scene and tried to do the once stellar job it did…. with mixed results (to be generous).
I agree that getting actual feedback from users would be great. I think we can all agree that akismet doesn’t cut it. Are you familiar with SK2? and how it nuked spam through various different methods? how it allowed for filtering, moderation, un-erase, etc.? Do any of the current anti-spam plugins come even close to its capabilities and quality?

I also have the ideas that spammers develop more quickly than spam filters, but the times that I have a lot of spam in my Akismet queue (but all in the queue) are usually gone when Bad Behavior is updated (Akismet seldom seems to be updated). The thing is, it costs time and effort to maintain a plugin, especially an anti-spam plugin and since most people do it for free, us users are dependent on the goodwill of people with more skills to write plugins than ourselves.

So you will just have to find a combination of sollutions that works.
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Combating_Comment_Spam

I’m lucky enough that a combination of two plugins does the trick.

Hi everyone, I was wondering why the wordpress community has yet to develop a real answer to spam.

Turn off comments on your blog…? Spam comments are a market economy model: they get paid so they are often ahead of the curve in the spam battle.

The combination of plugins seems to work best and I use Cookies for Comments and Akismet and have to deal with 1 spam comment out of ~700. That works for me but as Gangleri said your mileage may vary.