Of late I appear to be getting over a couple of thousand spam comments a day, all ably blocked off by Akismet.
In the past, I used to go through the blocked items, just in case some legitimate comments had been suppressed. And I would find one or two a week.
Since early December, I haven’t had the time or the energy to do the blocked item check; I’ve just gone for the delete unseen.
It is possible, as a result, that I may have deleted legitimate comments. If you have been the victim of such a deletion, my apologies.
Do let me know, by writing to [email protected] I have so far been loath to implement any other form of spam filter, especially one based on your entering Dali-clock-esque words. Your comments will help me make that call.
I’m having great success catching SPAM using a combination of SpamKarma’s amazing huristics and allowing people to register using OpenID. So far nothing but HAM in my comments, with no effort on my part.
I’ve been as loath to ask people to register. Something in me that wants people to be able to put their toe in the water without buying part of the pool. Maybe I’m wrong.
Does SpamKarma work simply with WordPress?
Yes, SpamKarma is a WordPress plugin:
http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/
I moved from Akismet after being similarly DOS attacked by comments.
OpenID registration is another plugin and is optional, but improves your Karma significantly:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wpopenid/