Spam Karma is getting some attention again these days, and there has been discussion of adding your Akismet plugin to "core" Spam Karma. Before it went any further, I figured we should check with the author. So... would that be alright with you?
On Feb 17, 8:13 pm, Stephen Rider <wp-hack...@striderweb.com> wrote:
> Spam Karma is getting some attention again these days, and there has
> been discussion of adding your Akismet plugin to "core" Spam Karma.
I know I'm not the person your question was meant for, but I have a
concern about including Akismet in the core of SK. Akismet is a fee-
based service, with the price going as high as $50/month for use on a
commercial site (http://akismet.com/commercial/). I'm worried that
including it in SK by default might open up commercial SK users to
accidentally "stealing" Akismet service without knowing any better.
If SK does include an Akismet in the core, is there a way to mitigate
the chances of accidental Akismet infringement?
> I know I'm not the person your question was meant for, but I have a > concern about including Akismet in the core of SK.
Ditto, but for different reasons. I use the Akismet plugin for Spam Karma, and I know I could change the karma it gives, but still: there are so many false positives in Ak that it brings spam back from the dead , reaching a karma of +1 or something, and thus I have to deal it myself. It's weird 'cos I have blogs that only use Akismet, and it doesn't seem to have any false positive problems, but still: ever since I added the Ak plugin to SK, I've had to moderate by hand more often than before.
That, and Akismet needs a key, which can only be given by wp.com - and I can't see us adding this whole process for the user. The point of using SK is that you don't rely on 3rd-party servers. SK in itself is pretty strong.
> I know I'm not the person your question was meant for, but I have a > concern about including Akismet in the core of SK.
Ditto, but for different reasons. I use the Akismet plugin for Spam Karma, and I know I could change the karma it gives, but still: there are so many false positives in Ak that it brings spam back from the dead , reaching a karma of +1 or something, and thus I have to deal it myself. It's weird 'cos I have blogs that only use Akismet, and it doesn't seem to have any false positive problems, but still: ever since I added the Ak plugin to SK, I've had to moderate by hand more often than before.
That, and Akismet needs a key, which can only be given by wp.com - and I can't see us adding this whole process for the user. The point of using SK is that you don't rely on 3rd-party servers. SK in itself is pretty strong.
On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Adam Messinger wrote:
> On Feb 17, 8:13 pm, Stephen Rider <wp-hack...@striderweb.com> wrote:
>> Spam Karma is getting some attention again these days, and there has >> been discussion of adding your Akismet plugin to "core" Spam Karma.
> I know I'm not the person your question was meant for
I know. I just CC-ed the list so that people would know what I was doing. His reply is at the bottom of this email.
> <snip> I'm worried that > including it in SK by default might open up commercial SK users to > accidentally "stealing" Akismet service without knowing any better.
You need a key to use Akismet, so accidental "infringement" is pretty much impossible.
On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Xavier Borderie wrote:
> I use the Akismet plugin for Spam Karma, and I know I could change the > karma it gives, but still: there are so many false positives in Ak > that it brings spam back from the dead , reaching a karma of +1 or > something, and thus I have to deal it myself. It's weird 'cos I have > blogs that only use Akismet, and it doesn't seem to have any false > positive problems, but still: ever since I added the Ak plugin to SK, > I've had to moderate by hand more often than before.
It's my understanding that some users have hacked the Akismet SK plugin to *only* give negative (that is, positive results are ignored). Reportedly this works quite well. We could make that a settable option, I suppose.
> That, and Akismet needs a key, which can only be given by wp.com - and > I can't see us adding this whole process for the user. The point of > using SK is that you don't rely on 3rd-party servers. SK in itself is > pretty strong.
That one is a reasonable argument. Perhaps we just leave it turned off by default (which it would have to be, actually, until a key is input.)
I'm not totally married to the idea, but I still think it warrants consideration.
From: Sebastian Herp <m...@sebbi.de> Date: February 18, 2009 10:00:53 AM CST To: Stephen Rider <wp-hack...@striderweb.com> Subject: Re: Spamkarma2 Akismet Plugin
Hi Stephen,
it's good to hear that Spam Karma will be further developed again.
Adding Akismet to the core is definitely a good idea and I am alright with that idea, after all I more or less just copied the original Akismet plugin and made it work within Spam Karma ... nothing new and revolutionary there ;-)
Glad to see that there is some momentum building for a first GPL release of SK!
Although I have been following the mailing list avidly, I abstained so
far from comments, as this is no longer my project and I wouldn't want
to interfere with those actively taking over... But do not hesitate to
ask me directly if you need any help with a particular aspect of the
existing code.
So far, I agree with the ongoing consensus on pretty much everything
that's been said... Lots of great ideas and exciting prospects.
A couple gratuitous notes and comments, make of them what you want:
- Akismet: as many pointed out, one should be careful if including it,
that it is neither free software, nor usable out of the box. Adding it
to the core can only be beneficial to those that might want to use it
provided it is disabled by default. It is also my experience from a
considerable number of feedbacks that Akismet tends to offset (in the
bad direction) SK's own results. As Xavier suggested, this could be
fixed by tweaking with weights and scores...
- UI: Most of SK2's UI dates back to many years back, it was done
before jquery and when using JS was still a huge pain in the ass... If
it was to be done again today, I think there would be ways to improve
it dramatically with just a little JS (and very little backend
changes).
I agree that option choices should be made more simple, but maybe
instead of removing them altogether, you could just hide the more
obscure ones in default mode (the way it's done already, but with even
less options showing by default). At any rate, SK should always be
fully usable out of the box...
- Plugins: while I love the idea of SK plugins being auto-upgradable,
it sounds like it would really result in a very messy UI (both for SK
and the general plugin mgt panel). I would advise against it until the
plugin API is upgraded to allow hierarchical plugin structures (no
idea if that's even under consideration). In the meantime, it should
be easy enough to add any relevant SK plugin to the core, making them
disabled by default if necessary.
- I am honestly not sure how important this issue is to people, but
one of the majorly broken part of SK in recent version of WP is its
moderation integration: email links moderation doesn't work (when WP
upgraded to use nonce, I unsuccessfully tried to use its very
rudimentary API to make SK's URL nonce-friendly, but it was just too
buggy at the time) and it's annoying to have two separate places to
moderate comments. I am not sure how easy it is (I assume it's not,
since Akismet does it), but the ideal solution would be to hook into
WP's new 'spam' moderation comment in the main mgt screen and if
possible attempt to plug SK back into WP's own email notification flow
(currently, it shortcuts it entirely and sends email itself: I'm sure
there's a better way to do it in newer versions of WP)...
Anyway, good luck everybody and I can't wait to see the result!
> On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Adam Messinger wrote:
>> On Feb 17, 8:13 pm, Stephen Rider <wp-hack...@striderweb.com> wrote:
>>> Spam Karma is getting some attention again these days, and there has
>>> been discussion of adding your Akismet plugin to "core" Spam Karma.
>> I know I'm not the person your question was meant for
> I know. I just CC-ed the list so that people would know what I was
> doing. His reply is at the bottom of this email.
>> <snip> I'm worried that
>> including it in SK by default might open up commercial SK users to
>> accidentally "stealing" Akismet service without knowing any better.
> You need a key to use Akismet, so accidental "infringement" is pretty
> much impossible.
> On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Xavier Borderie wrote:
>> I use the Akismet plugin for Spam Karma, and I know I could change the
>> karma it gives, but still: there are so many false positives in Ak
>> that it brings spam back from the dead , reaching a karma of +1 or
>> something, and thus I have to deal it myself. It's weird 'cos I have
>> blogs that only use Akismet, and it doesn't seem to have any false
>> positive problems, but still: ever since I added the Ak plugin to SK,
>> I've had to moderate by hand more often than before.
> It's my understanding that some users have hacked the Akismet SK
> plugin to *only* give negative (that is, positive results are
> ignored). Reportedly this works quite well. We could make that a
> settable option, I suppose.
>> That, and Akismet needs a key, which can only be given by wp.com - and
>> I can't see us adding this whole process for the user. The point of
>> using SK is that you don't rely on 3rd-party servers. SK in itself is
>> pretty strong.
> That one is a reasonable argument. Perhaps we just leave it turned
> off by default (which it would have to be, actually, until a key is
> input.)
> I'm not totally married to the idea, but I still think it warrants
> consideration.
