Comments on: Akismet vs Defensio Anti Spam Review

By: McBilly

McBilly — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:21:51 +0000

Thanks for clearing that up Matt. The public doesn’t really notice anything that’s happening behind the scenes. And frankly, I prefer updates happening behind the scenes because I don’t need to exert any efforts on making updates or keeping track of new features.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:58:00 +0000

“With Akismet, if you don’t check frequently, it’s almost impossible to paginate through all the spam to find a false positive.”

The newer versions of the WordPress Akismet plugin have an option to discard spam on posts older than 30 days. On most blogs posts over thirty days get over 95% of the spam and a statistically insignificant amount of the false positives, as real comments are almost always on newer posts.

“We haven’t seen many (any?) significant changes in Akismet for a long time.”

When Akismet is working you shouldn’t notice it at all, however that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything happening behind the scenes. Multiple datacenter failover, advanced learning algorithms and collection systems, adaption to different types of content like wikis and social networks, and much more isn’t something our day-to-day users will over notice, but it’s as technically sophisticated (or more so) than our operations for WordPress.com, which is now one of the top websites in the world.

By: McBilly

McBilly — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:57:54 +0000

Wow. Thanks for bringing that up Navjot. Companies that sincerely listens to customer feedbacks are rare nowadays.

Also, thanks for the heads up on the bug on my site. I wouldn’t have noticed that if not for you!

By: NSpeaks

NSpeaks — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:50:27 +0000

Defensio Team might not have time to tell you, so I thought I should inform you that now Defensio displays stats in dashboard too!

Check link.

And by the time of writing maybe you will see yet another again Wordpress plugin update post since post mentions latest version as 1.1.2 whereas it again got updated to 1.1.3.

Defensio listens to all suggestions …. Excellent …very less companies do this sincerely.

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:49:04 +0000

Happy to help with some insight on Defensio. Hopefully it benefits your readers.

As for my blog…I do what I can…and I appreciate the kind words. *chuckle*

By: McBilly

McBilly — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:46:13 +0000

Got it. Thanks for the sharing your experience with Defensio, Ben. You have very good points. And might I say, you have a great blog back there. Keep it up.

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:36:21 +0000

I’ve been using Defensio for awhile, and like any software it had some growing pains. So I can’t really say when I hit the sweet spot of it working very well for me, and how long that took.

The Defensio guys would probably be able to give you a better answer, although I would suspect it depends on the volume of spam you’re getting.

My take is that -at least- someone is innovating in this space and giving us bloggers something new to experiment with. That’s worth my fairly minimal time investment in testing it out longer…

By: McBilly

McBilly — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:31:24 +0000

Hi Ben. I highly appreciate your insight on this. It’s good to see another person’s point of view. Some of the things you pointed out makes a lot of sense. For the benefit of others, how long did it take for your blog to be Defensio-optimized?

Also, I have to totally agree that since a new competitor is in the market, Akismet will put more effort in improving their product too. In which case we all win.

By: Ben Yoskovitz

Ben Yoskovitz — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:52:29 +0000

I made the switch to Defensio some time ago. And I’ve enjoyed it for a couple reasons. I don’t think it’s got so many more “robust features” as one commenter points out, it’s more about how they’re trying to make the process of processing spam easier.

Just sorting the spam is a great bonus, in my opinion. With Akismet, if you don’t check frequently, it’s almost impossible to paginate through all the spam to find a false positive.

Defensio is a bit more aggressive than Akismet (I’ve been using Defensio for a few months at least) but I prefer that. I’d rather be approving comments than having to delete spam that’s sneaking through. I also find it does a good job of catching people who use SEO-drive names vs. their real names (which I’ll tolerate for awhile but find frustrating at some point.)

Finally, I think Defensio has the advantage over Akismet from the perspective of innovation — i.e. they’re doing SOMETHING. We haven’t seen many (any?) significant changes in Akismet for a long time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Defensio’s entry into the marketplace spurs the Akismet folk forward … in which case we all win.

I’ll be sticking with Defensio for now and I would encourage others to do the same. And give it a try.

By: Dexter

Dexter — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:15 +0000

I think Akismet is still doing fine for me.. So no need to change at the moment.