Comments on: Mollom May Soon Offer Serious Competition To Akismet

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:47:28 +0000

I’ve been having a lot of spam coming through Aksimet, hopefully some good competition will force Akismet to get a little bit better with its spam filtering.

By: Steven Peck

Steven Peck — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:50:43 +0000

@Scott Y - check out your logs and filter by mollom messages. It has all the information you need right there. The body of the content that had been attempted. I used to check mine daily but frankly after almost a year of alpha and beta testing I don’t bother anymore.

By: Scott Y.

Scott Y. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:39:22 +0000

@Dries — thanks for the link. Maybe I am just so used to Akismet’s “spam-ham-maybe?” issue and think a moderation queue is necessary because false positives are almost unavoidable.

However, I am happy with no moderation queue ONLY if I trust this technology. Mollom is new and yet to be proved — how does it earn trust from its users if I cannot be assured that no legitimate comment has been marked as spam?

By: Philippe Chrun

Philippe Chrun — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:11:20 +0000

There’s also defensio.com from the guys at karabunga.com

By: KillerStartups.com - Mollom.com - Fight Spam, Save Ham

KillerStartups.com - Mollom.com - Fight Spam, Save Ham — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:34:23 +0000

Mollom.com - Fight Spam, Save Ham…

I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

By: Blog Software Firms Spread Their Wings « Changing Way

Blog Software Firms Spread Their Wings « Changing Way — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:21:05 +0000

[...] significant similarity. Mollom, like Automattic’s Akismet, is a spam-fighting web service. Duncan at TechCrunch reports that Akismet is the current market [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:48:42 +0000

Duncan,
Thanks for the response. I would agree with you (and Matt) that Akismet has got to be the market leader, but I’d be interested in stats if there are any available.
Now, back to my own post on this and on the recent Six Apart activity…

By: Web 2.0 Sammelalbum - Web2Null - MolloM

Web 2.0 Sammelalbum - Web2Null - MolloM — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:16:07 +0000

[...] MolloM-Filter lernt durch alle Seiten, auf denen Mollom installiert ist. http://mollom.com/ via: TechCrunch Technorati: MolloM Kategorie: Tools [...]

By: Mollom: A Spam Prevention Tool And Potential Askimet's Competitor | B.E.T.A. Daily

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:15:04 +0000

[...] Automattic, will soon find strong competition from a Belgium based company named Mollom, reports TechCrunch. The service currently does not support Wordpress but is planning to provide it [...]

By: Dries Knapen

Dries Knapen — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:31:23 +0000

@Scott: not having a moderation queue in Mollom is a much debated topic, but it’s something the developers really believe in — they have discussed the issue here: http://buytaert.net/website-sp.....ion-queues
and here:
http://mollom.com/spam-vs-ham

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:26:58 +0000

Andrew
No, I don’t handy (although I probably could find a reference), but after years covering the blogging industry, then taking a blog network through VC it was the only serious choice for blogs and although I cant prove this, I’d bet maybe 80-90% of anyone running a WordPress install is using Akismet, and WordPress is usually regarded as the market leader in self hosted blogging. There’s also Akismet versions for other platforms as well. Are their commercial grade alternatives, yes, but I say market leading in terms of user numbers, not revenue or similar. It’s probably the only thing Matt Mullenweg and I will ever agree on

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » スパム防止ツールのMollom、Akismetの強力ライバルになるか？

TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » スパム防止ツールのMollom、Akismetの強力ライバルになるか？ — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:08:21 +0000

[...] [原文へ] [...]

By: Scott Y.

Scott Y. — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:49:44 +0000

I have actually installed it on one of my blogs (running Drupal 5.x — haven’t had a chance to upgrade to Drupal 6 yet). That blog of mine was running the Drupal Akismet plugin and for the last 3 months the false negative rate gets pretty bad.

After running it for 3 days and it is already blocking 1,300+ spams. Not to mention a nice Flex-based graph right inside your Drupal admin area to display number of spams squashed against time.

Problem? There does not seem to be a way to find out whether those spams blocked are false positives. They don’t go to the moderation queue — they just disappears.

By: Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:46:00 +0000

For those who want to learn some more about Mollom, please consult the following two blog posts:

1. http://buytaert.net/website-sp.....ion-queues
2. http://buytaert.net/spam-openid-and-mollom

By: Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:43:00 +0000

@Aaron: the Drupal module for Mollom has an option that allows you to configure what happens when the Mollom servers are unavailable (i.e. block all comments, accept all comments). We have servers in different data centers so that shouldn’t happen too often.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:51:46 +0000

Duncan, you refer to Akismet as the market leader. Do you have stats and a source for them?

By: 113.com

113.com — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:09:21 +0000

Akismet generally good but once in a full moon eat up the wrong thing.

By: Igor The Troll

Igor The Troll — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:07:27 +0000

Anyone who is tired of Akismet blocking commentators and want to only block the real Spam Malware domain links please have a look at http://www.phsdl.net

PHSDL anti Spam filter is a free service that I have developed to help bloggers fight Spam. You just need to add a little PHP script to your WordPress blog.

Also works with other blogs and forums.

Regards,
Igor

By: dave

dave — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:02:54 +0000

uh, hubris has settled in amongst these spam fighters, as is well stated here:

http://tinyurl.com/6kp6gn

By: The Little League Coach

The Little League Coach — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:33:39 +0000

We will have to watch this. I never use anything until it is tried and proven though. Too dangerous for a novice like me.

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:18:55 +0000

Competition is always a wonderful thing, especially in the world of SPAM but I don’t see Wordpress bundling Mollom with it’s offerings anytime soon.

Jon
http://woodmarvels.com - Create Unique Memories

By: Aaron B. Hockley

Aaron B. Hockley — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:04:05 +0000

If their service (optionally) presents a CAPTCHA after submission, based on the comment content, I hope that there’s a mechanism where the fact that their servers are down doesn’t prevent user comments. If Akismet goes down, bloggers get flooded with comment spam, but legit users can still post. If Mollom relies on its own servers to analyze each message before postback, I could foresee a situation where Mollom being down prevent any comments from posting…

By: Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:58:29 +0000

They are aiming to improve the 99.94% ?

I think they are going to be a serious competitor to Akismet

By: Mark McGranaghan

Mark McGranaghan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:56:27 +0000

See also Defensio, an advanced Akismet competitor. (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/defensio)