WordPress admin panel: why is Akismet not under Comments?

wpI guess the title says it all … Akismet, which is a comment spam identification and deletion tool, is under the active menu, Manage, not under Comments.Odd.On a related note, I’m getting something like 5000 comment spam attempts a week, of which about 1 makes it through onto the site.Two things that implies:

  1. Akismet is stunningly amazingly incredibly good. There are no words.
  2. A huge amount of web traffic is spambots looking for places to implant their evil input. I wonder what percentage? 1%? 3%?
  3. Bonus implication: the success rate for comment spam is approaching zero … for blog/forum owners who know about Akismet.

5 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Odd. I just did a cursory glance at one of my WordPress sites and it has the Awaiting Moderation right beside Akismet Spam. So, I guess it needed to be either one place or the other.

    As much as it seems to be part of the system, Akismet really is just a plugin.

  • You say about 1/5000 spam comments make it to the site (false negatives), which is quite impressive performance! But what about false positives? (ie legit comments that end up in the spambox)?

  • Tony: honest answer is I don’t know.

    I delete my Akismet spam every week or so, and always scan the the top few comments for real ones. I’ve never found one yet, but obviously since I only check the ones on the first page of spam, I could be missing others in the thousands that have accumulated.

    All I know is:
    – I’ve never seen it delete a real comment
    – lots of real comments make it through