Akismet Interface
We’ve got two improvements to the Akismet interface for you guys today.
The first is on the spam screen, there are now tabs that filter by what type of spam it is, namely a comment, pingback, or trackback. This allows you to scan more quickly through pingbacks and trackbacks, especially.
(Remember that just because it’s linking to you doesn’t mean it’s not spam. Beware of compliments too! Always visit the URL, see if it’s mostly advertising or looks auto-generated.)
Also to help keep the size of your Akismet queue down, we’ve started to discard spam on posts older than a month, which our statistics show are overwhelmingly spam. Of course if your spam queue doesn’t get that large and you’d like to turn this option off, just check the new option under Options > Discussion:
Posted: Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 5:11 pm. Filed in New Features.
Tags: akismet, anti-spam, interface
Jan 17th at 5:29 pm
Ok, my spam is starting to climb… so perhaps this will be very useful indeed…
Thanks for your great work!
Ich blogge auf deutsch, I blog in German
with
WordPress…!
Jan 17th at 5:39 pm
I think this feature is going to be useful. Separating the pingbacks/trackbacks is a good idea. thanks.
Jan 17th at 5:40 pm
I just came back after a year long absence and couldn’t believe the amount of spam this tool caught, there was almost none when I left. These changes should help, thanks.
Jan 17th at 5:57 pm
Akismet is already great. Now it will be more powerful.
Thanks for the creativity.
Jan 17th at 6:01 pm
same here anitz… my span never been so low…
Tx for Akismet e tx for this new upgrade.
WordPress keepz ruling
Jan 17th at 6:11 pm
Thank you! This will make despamming a lot easier
Jan 17th at 6:29 pm
Great !
Jan 17th at 6:33 pm
Good improvements! Most of my spam comments are on one or two posts from months ago, so maybe the guys who do that will finally get the message! It’s nice to see no spam waiting.
Jan 17th at 6:38 pm
Yes, thank you. And thank GOD for Askimet.
Jan 17th at 6:40 pm
me likey! Thanks!
Jan 17th at 6:43 pm
Cool! Thanks so much for this filtering mechanism, because I *hate* having to scroll down through a lot of the junk you guys catch for me, just to make sure I haven’t missed something. This will be a *TREMENDOUS* help! WP rocks!
Jan 17th at 6:49 pm
great one again Matt, thanks
Jan 17th at 6:51 pm
Good work, Matt! I appreciate the ability to NOT discard spam on old posts in case a legitimate comment gets wrongly marked as Spam.
Jan 17th at 6:54 pm
I don’t get much traffic. So I’m not so overwhelmed by spam as others may be. I’ve always been curious about the ones that were auto-deleted before I could see them. Thanks for the option to look at them!
You just keep getting better and better…
Jan 17th at 6:57 pm
Thank you!
Jan 17th at 6:57 pm
Thanks
Jan 17th at 7:00 pm
Thanks for the “don’t discard spam on old posts” option. (does it mean “don’t discard all comments on old posts as spam?”)
As a new WordPress.com user i’m still worried, that the many spam-comments, the spam-count says to have deleted and that i never had the chance to see, because they never showed up in the spam-queue are *really* spam… I wish every suspected spam-comment would show up in the queue, so i had the chance to decide myself…
Though my secret hope is, that the spam count rises – without showing spam in the queue to moderate – just for marketing purposes
Jan 17th at 7:01 pm
If you get a legitimate comment on an old post, it should work just as before, but if you get a comment that Akismet thinks is spam and this option isn’t disabled it’ll discard it without saving it to the database for you to review. Since most false positives happen on recent posts, this allows you to focus on reviewing just the comments that are most likely to be real.
Jan 17th at 7:05 pm
Not really a great addition. What would be more helpful is if you only show the first 5 lines of a post with the option to see the entire post if need be (throuh a nice ajaxy button). That way we won’t have to scroll through a mile long page just to check 10 comments.
Jan 17th at 7:06 pm
Arsenalist, if we did that spammers would just put the spammy parts at the very end.
Jan 17th at 7:27 pm
One thing everyone can do, is report SPAM pingbacks and trackbacks to Google. Page rank on Google is calculated by volume of links and visits and when they find spam sites, they de-list all links on the site. If your blog is targeted and your content is stolen and then linked back to you, your blog will be hurt by Google’s actions as well. Protect your blog and report all incoming SPAM links to your blog.
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Rose
xo
Jan 17th at 7:35 pm
What would we do without Akismet?
I was surprised to find more trackback than comment spam in my queue: 226 trackbacks, 136 comments. I don’t look in there often, hadn’t realized the trackback spam had become so popular.
Thanks for the fun tool!
Jan 17th at 7:41 pm
Thank you !
Jan 17th at 7:42 pm
Completely unrelated question… Matt: when is the Xmas hat coming off? It’s the middle of Jan!
Jan 17th at 7:43 pm
You’re right about the santa hat, maybe later this week…
Jan 17th at 7:56 pm
great !!
Jan 17th at 7:56 pm
Thank you very much for doing this. I get a ton of spam in the filter, and quite often a good comment is held there.
Jan 17th at 8:02 pm
sweet.
Jan 17th at 8:04 pm
Is ‘Always visit the URL’ sensible advice? Don’t people set up pages with malware on them and then post comments and send pingbacks coming from these pages as a way to lure people to sites that will infect their computers? I would tend to say instead: if in doubt, don’t visit the URL.
Jan 17th at 8:04 pm
good idea. any way to track down these sploggers? they are out of control and i don’t know what to do about them.
WC
Jan 17th at 8:15 pm
Sweet.
Jan 17th at 8:19 pm
great…
Jan 17th at 8:22 pm
Sounds good. However, I just attempted to delete three spam messages and it is still indicating I have three on the tab after deleting all. Hmmm, seems like there is a bug somewhere.
Jan 17th at 8:32 pm
good idea, guys.
Jan 17th at 8:33 pm
Thanks.
Jan 17th at 8:48 pm
Wouldn’t it be lovely to have the option to automatically delete comments that say “Paris Hilton,” “Jessica Alba,” or “Angelina Jolie” more than 20 times in one comment? Those are by and large the majority of what Askimet catches.
Jan 17th at 9:14 pm
Yet another great improvement. Way to go, guys.
Jan 17th at 9:31 pm
cool job!
Jan 17th at 9:35 pm
Sweet! This is helpful!
Jan 17th at 9:37 pm
Thanks for making an already great tool even better!
Jan 17th at 9:45 pm
Holla!
Ok, and about those annoying spammer robots, anything to block them?
~Ag!~
Jan 17th at 10:05 pm
nice update.
Jan 17th at 10:05 pm
Perfect! We can get rid of these pings and trackbacks! wahooo!!! Couldn’t always via comments, hopefully this solves that issue. Thanks guys!
Jan 17th at 10:11 pm
“Always visit the URL, see if it’s mostly advertising or looks auto-generated.)”
Dont know if I agree with that Guys. Couldnt you be leaving yourself open to all sorts of scripts etc to end up on your computer….
Jan 17th at 10:15 pm
No comments – no Spam
Jan 17th at 10:35 pm
Good development
Jan 17th at 10:37 pm
Excellent suggestion about checking the url before letting a comment through. Since I partially moderate comments, letting one of these guys through the door could lead to them posting what they want on my blog.
Thanks.
Jan 17th at 10:48 pm
Fantastic!
Jan 17th at 11:36 pm
Perfect, keep improving.
Thank you !
Jan 18th at 12:42 am
I tried it and I loved being able to sort through the pingbacks separately! I found a legit one amongst the strangies. Having avatars show up in the in the queue is great, too–thanks!
Jan 18th at 1:16 am
Thanks as always!
Jan 18th at 1:21 am
Cool! I just cleared two people out of our Spam box. ^^
Jan 18th at 1:27 am
Thanks Matt,
Very useful.
Best regards from Spain
Jan 18th at 1:33 am
Thank you Very Much for this! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
Jan 18th at 1:34 am
just a question, but what are pingbacks and trackbacks?
Jan 18th at 1:40 am
Great improvement, really I wanted this for many weeks ago while my spam was growing.
Jan 18th at 2:23 am
Great works Matt,
Spam always attack me somehow
Jan 18th at 2:48 am
2nd comment
Very good
Jan 18th at 3:03 am
Excellent!
Jan 18th at 3:25 am
Cool! Ty WP n’ Akismet!
Jan 18th at 3:29 am
I hate spam!
Jan 18th at 3:29 am
I <3 spam!
Jan 18th at 3:35 am
Thanks. Good addition by the WP elves.
Jan 18th at 3:43 am
Looks good. More good work from WP.com! You guys rock!
Jan 18th at 4:10 am
Sweet Tweak!
Jan 18th at 4:18 am
Akismet is useless. I desperately want to turn off this feature, but I can’t. Akismet blocks many comments that is actually not a spam.
Jan 18th at 4:47 am
Thanks for your great work!
Jan 18th at 4:57 am
Good.
Jan 18th at 5:21 am
Wonderful! This anti spam feature is the very reason why I use wordpress. You guys are just giving me more reason to stick to wordpress. Keep up the good work!
Jan 18th at 5:32 am
Great work indeed.
Thanks
Jan 18th at 5:35 am
I dont experience much spamming happening on my blog as such, but this is definitely going to be a boon for the very popular blogs!
Thanking you on behalf of all o’ them!
Jan 18th at 5:58 am
Anitz, this does nothing for the amount of spam you’ll receive. It only changes how you manage it slightly.
What I’d love to hear is why I’ve seen two recent cases where Akismet has flagged comments from people who regularly comment as spam (it didn’t anytime previously) Their comments held nothing I would consider suspicious.
Jan 18th at 6:02 am
Very informative. Akismet is really a best soft for preventing spam.
Jan 18th at 6:52 am
Matt, thanks for the new updates with great features.
Jan 18th at 7:04 am
just a new user!
i keep rollin!
Jan 18th at 7:36 am
Thank you for this. I’ve been getting more and more spam of trackback kind, so it will be good to sort through them more efficiently.
Jan 18th at 7:55 am
great feature. Thanks.
Jan 18th at 8:27 am
Hi Matt!
This is a great addition, particularly the discarding of comments on older posts. Your stats are definitely right cos I get this all the time on my old stuff. Thanks a million for the fantastic functionality, should simplify the lives of many
JL
Jan 18th at 8:30 am
Well done, my friend. Thank you for that and for all you’ve done.
Jan 18th at 8:34 am
Good stuff!
PS:
I wouldn’t advice to “always visit the URL” considering that most of the time they are links to adult content or worse…
Jan 18th at 8:36 am
Hi
When you say that you are discarding spam on posts older than a month, do you mean spam or do you mean all comments? Just a question for clarity really.
Cheers
Aphra.
Jan 18th at 8:38 am
I like the idea of breaking things up by type, but when I scan say Comments I’d expect the ‘Delete all’ button to delete just the Comments, and not the other sub-categories as well.
Jan 18th at 8:40 am
Thank you.
Great work !
Jan 18th at 8:48 am
Another brilliant improvement. Akismet really is the bees knees!
Jan 18th at 9:29 am
very nice work. i am loving it!!!!
Jan 18th at 9:41 am
thank u people
Jan 18th at 10:02 am
Amazing…!
the never ending creativities… saluut!
thank, for fixed problem with akismet!!!
Jan 18th at 11:00 am
I agree with Thomas Knoll. It would be nice to be able to check the comments in the spam-queue, just to make sure you don’t miss any “normal” comments.
Jan 18th at 11:31 am
Awsome Thanks!
Jan 18th at 12:07 pm
I’m getting about 1 spam comment a day (after being here 3 months), on my old site I got dozens, so any way to combat it = yay. Also, who wants to waste space on trash? ;p
Jan 18th at 1:01 pm
Thanks a lot!
Jan 18th at 1:47 pm
I’m liking it thus far….
Jan 18th at 2:20 pm
Good
Jan 18th at 2:59 pm
Thanks Matt
my spam too, is starting to climb, so this will be very useful indeed.
Jan 18th at 3:29 pm
This is really useful. As it is, Akismet catches all my spam. Now it even organizes it neatly
Jan 18th at 4:35 pm
WordPress is getting better and better. Everyday better than yesterday.
GREAT!
Jan 18th at 6:53 pm
Why don’t we create something that is smarter than this current Akismet and block spams before they even enter the database? Imagine you have to moderate 1000 spams/day how much headache it becomes. You might even quit blogging.
What’s the difference between PingBack and TrackBack? Is it one actually linked to your post (TrackBack) and the other one only ping you without a link (PingBack)?
Jan 18th at 9:36 pm
OMG
i love the new improvement
it makes things so much neater and more organized
great job
Adam G
Jan 18th at 9:38 pm
Nice, but: the main problem with the spam interface is still there. It is still impossible to go through larger amounts of spam and delete them page wise. I would like to have a button to just mark/delete all the spam currently shown to me in the page I’m looking at. Doing this I could delete page after page but go through it before.
Most e-mail web interfaces do it exactly like that, btw.
Jan 18th at 9:52 pm
Nice… the upgrade doesn’t break Akismet Auntie Spam.