Akismet 2.2.1 — Now With Stats!
10 pm, October 20th, 2008
If you upgraded to Akismet 2.2, you likely noticed a cool new feature: Akismet stats. We’ve now released Akismet 2.2.1, which includes a few bug fixes.
Akismet stats track your comment metrics, including missed spam, false positives (Akismet thought it was spam, but you disagreed), and Yummy Pie, which displays your ham vs. spam count in a nifty pie chart.
What’s ham? The good stuff. Delicious, legitimate comments. Spam is the non-legitimate filler that Akismet excels at blocking.
We’ve also made significant backend changes to speed up Akismet’s response time. If you think a comment is spam (or ham), the system will now adapt instantly to your feedback — a major improvement over the old adaptation time, which could take a few days.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Can’t wait to play with the new release. Well done guys!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:31 am
Those are some pretty neat additions. I’ll be interested in viewing the spam/ham chart as well as missed spam to judge how well akismet is doing.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:58 am
“false positives (Akismet thought it was spam, but you disagreed)”
Why not use straightforward English?
“false positives (Akismet thought it was spam, but IT WAS NOT)”
Thanks for the statistics. It’s a useful addition. And the visuals are nicely implemented.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:00 am
@demetrius – unfortunately a great many people are taken in by what the spammers say. I wrote about this last year and this continues to this day. Akismet and any other anti-spam systems will always make mistakes which is why we have made significant improvements in this release of Akismet to mitigate against that, for Akismet to learn faster, for you to be more confident in your blog being protected.
But people will also approve what is actually spam.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:06 am
Brilliant!
October 21st, 2008 at 2:51 am
I love the new stats feature with all of the pretty little charts! Yay Akismet!
October 21st, 2008 at 3:07 am
I noticed this new feature in my dashboard. Good going.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am
I love Aksmet!
Kill the spams!
October 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am
It’s an interesting new feature. To tell you the truth I never thought that I need such a feature. But now, because of it, I realize that there is so much spam and so few real comments.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:57 am
Hi,
The stats don’t show properly in FF3. The frame where the chart, etc should appear doesn’t appear full screen, but for a small bit.
Eddy
October 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
This is an interesting step to keep an eye on what’s going over author’s blog. I was quiet astonished when I saw the footer of this blog which mention that 86% of comments are spam!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I’m enjoying the new features, though it’s leading me to ask a bigger rhetorical question – “Just how do we encourage more actual comments on our blogs?” The amount of spam vs. the amount of actual comments is quite disturbing to look at, but it shows you just how powerful Akismet is. Great job!
October 21st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
@Mark — Thanks for the explanation, Mark! It makes sense this way.
I’ve fallen myself for spammer tricks, at least once that I know of. This kind:
INNOCENT-LOOKING COMMENT[a href="http://spammy-link.spam/].[/a]
Akismet flagged it but I let it through, only to catch it later while looking at the HTML source to troubleshoot something.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I love Aksmet,thanx
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Ah, but do you believe the figures. I have always had grave doubts about the spam count that it used to report. Now I know that they are all made up.
I have a relatively quiet blog – not many people visit and fewer comment – yet For October so far the stats report 1725 spam, 41 ham, 8 missed and 0 false positives.
I know for certain (because I can count them) that I have only had 5 legitimate comments this month but there were 38 missed (I was wondering if Akismet had failed) and I always carefully reject each one using the spam button. I am pretty sure that the spam count is high as well – I clear them out each week and the count is usually about 2-300 a time, though last week was a bit higher.
October 30th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Is there an Akismet forum where I can ask a question? After 2 years of Akismet working fine, I’m getting overrun with 20-30 drug spams a day, all coming from a source using the same top-level URL (forged). Is there some way of blocking all comments that leave a certain top-level URL? Specifically, http://www.volny.cz…….
November 25th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Good plug-in! But there is a problem, namely: if the message has got in spam, that is two variants: or to exclude written of the list of spamers, or to confirm that it the spamer… It would be very convenient “to resolve button presence the message”.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Could you please split php and css?
I change css and with every update i need do it again.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Are there release notes outlining the improvements to Akismet?
I hoped it might be in the Akismet blog (and I found some for 2.2.1)…