Akismet

No, that's not a contradiction. I'm pretty sure that recent versions come installed with references to RBLs, which it will check against without you manually importing them. I could be wrong on that, but even if I am, I don't consider adding one-time references to RBL's "training".

When I was referring to comments being held, I was talking about the case where Akismet's servers are down, not when my comment got moderated.

Why the heck would you want to write your own plugin to do everything SK2 already does, and then have it do a spam-check against Akismet? I guess you could make it an addition to all the other filters in SK2, which might be cool, but I don't think there's a big need for that right now, since SK2 works just fine without it.

There's nothing difficult about setting up SK2, though and anyone who sets up their own blog (on their own server as opposed to a service like wordpress.com) could easily handle it.

The bottom line for me is that for totally non-technical people who would not be comfortable with or able to set up SK2, Akismet is certainly a great, easy to use alternative. You just have to willing to pay the price losing comment functionality whenever some script kiddie (or spammer trying to discredit them) decides to take down Akismet's servers.

You are contradicting a point when you say,

SK2 also makes use of multiple public blacklists

but before that you said, I didn't have to do any “training� of SK2. You have to import those BLs.

I guess the best thing it could do is hold it in some kind of queue locally and keep trying to check later

which could be the reason for your comment being in moderation.

you could do anything. You could write a plugin that does all of what you like about Spam Karma and then check Akismet to a mark it accordingly and have your plugin decide what to do with it based on your tests and Akismet. But no, you can't change the way the server processes comments and marks them good or bad.

The point is I trust Akismet and I think it's easier, I've used spam Karma 2 before, for a while, and I didn't like it that much.

Your notification suggestion is a good one. I, too, would like to see that one.

Every one of the points I made above continues to hold up. I won't reiterate them all here, just comment on the ones you just mentioned...

I didn't have to do any "training" of SK2. The only false positive I've ever seen was that one that caught yours that one time. Since yours did the same, I'd say we're even there, as far as "training" goes.

Also, I forgot to mention this above, but the fact that Akismet processes a lot more spam than my local copy of SK2 (and therefore theoretically has more of an opportunity to "learn") is also a bogus point, because SK2 also makes use of multiple public blacklists, so I also get the benefit of that kind of wider learning.

From what I've read, your comment does not go through when their servers are down. As I said before, the only things it can do are either fail to process any comments at all, or allow everything including spam. I guess the best thing it could do is hold it in some kind of queue locally and keep trying to check later, but I seriously doubt that it does that. If so, kudos to them, but even so, it's a deficiency.

The API certainly does *not* mean that you can do anything you want with it. In fact the API at the link you posted does nothing more than allow you to post a comment to Akismet and have it tell you whether it's spam or not, just like what's in WP now. (OK, it does a couple other things, like key checking, but this is NOT an API that allows you to modify anything about how it works, which was exactly my point.)

That was cool, it was the first time I had to use the movable comment form.

Out of the box it doesn't work perfect, you still have to train it. I guess this is the "problem" with Akimet but I never needed to train it all I had to do was moderate your comments and that's the only problem I've ever had.

I don't really know what happens if their server is down but I'm sure the comment goes through and I don't know but it could always check later.

You could potentially do anything you want with it, even make your own plugin.

Nope.

First of all, it's partially a matter of opinion, but I would prefer SK2 for many reasons I've already previously outlined.

You don't need to "roll up your sleeves" at all to get SK2 to work, that's just not true. Out of the box it works perfectly fine.

In addition, if you *do* want to tweak any of the many available parts of the config, you can do so, which I don't think you can with Akismet (could be wrong on this, since I've never used it).

As for my comment about fixing your moderated comment, I was referring to the fact that I could simply alter the setting that caused the initial false positive, so that it doesn't happen again. Can you do that with Akismet?

What's more, if you discover something about the way it works that you can't change via whatever configuration options may be available, can you open up the source code and modify it however you like? Of course, you cannot. With SK2, you can.

Finally, if someone is using my blog to try to comment, that means my server is up, and since there are no external dependencies on outside services, people can submit comments as long as my blog is operational. With Akismet, however, your server may be in perfect running order, but if the Akismet servers are down, what happens to your users who want to comment? Either your spam prevention is completely missing (best case), or users can't comment at all on your blog (worst case).

Wonder how long it will be before there are DDOSes being launched against the Akismet servers on a regular basis?