Webtropic

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via Daylife

Care to know how much spam you missed? Not really.

But it is an educating exercise nevertheless. And if you happen to have a hosted wordpress blog, then Akismet, the spam filter, can be of use as  Akismet now comes loaded with stats.

Since I happen to own one (hosted wordpress blog), I had a good look at it.

Confusing!

The canned meat in the picture above is ham. But ‘ham’ according to Akismet is a comment that is the opposite of spam. A proper one.

This leads to a ham to spam ratio calculation.

Still there?

If ham were spam none would starve (commentwise, I mean). See this yummy pie from my Greek blog stats and you will understand.

Jokes aside, Akismet does a pretty good job. Yet, for me, it is not the overall stats that are of interest.

The new Akismet offers an insight into two other more important metrics:

• Missed Spam, the spam that made its way to a post.
• False Positive, the real comments that were mistaken for spam.

Of the two, I value more the second, because it reveals a real problem: I am sure you have experienced the small frustration of leaving a comment and seeing it disappear. This can drive a new visitor away for good. That’s why I would like these stats to include the actual comment links. An examination of a relatively large number, might reveal a pattern as to why this happens, a pattern that can be reported back to the Akismet team.

I only hope the team is listening