Blogging used to be fun.
Then it started to suck. Spam sucked. Life sucked.
Now life is good. Spam is no more. Matt told me to use Akismet; I was skeptical. I am no longer skeptical. I love you, Akismet.
Akismet has caught 501,725 spam for you since you first installed it.
Yup. Since January 15.
Jeremy Cole 
And if for “some” reason you’ll become skeptical again, try Spam Karma – saves you from those 5% skipped by Akismet.
We love Akismet too.
I don’t even scan the comments Akismet filters any more. Do you know if there’s a setting to send those comments right into oblivion?
Cheers —
Alan
Once I finally upgraded my site to WordPress 2.1 and started using Akismet (August 2006), I stopped needing to add 15 “keywords” to my grey and black list every day. After five years or blogging using flat-file PHP includes, I switched to WordPress, but comments spammers jumped all over anything I left open.
With Akismet, despite my closing down the comments of any back posts authored before February 2005, there are almost no comments spams that get through. There are a couple here and there. My number’s not nearly as big as yours, but…
“Akismet has caught 14,558 spam for you since you first installed it.” (48/day average)
Check your Akismet spam file. It flags most legit comments as spam too. Want to drive your bona fide commenters away? Use Akismet the Web’s worst spam filter.
Hi Tom,
I check occasionally, and very very very few legit comments get flagged as spam. And honestly, I’m OK with the few that don’t get through if it saves me from dealing with the onslaught of real spam (1.2M spams now).
I think the effectiveness of Akismet (like any spam filter) will largely depend on the content of the ham — if they are have enough actual content, and your blog isn’t about things like mortgages and whatnot, Akismet should work well.
Regards,
Jeremy