I’m a moderator on a forum and lately one of our longtime users who’s never been spammed once by Askimet has been getting spammed like “automatically”. It doesn’t matter if she posts, she gets spammed. There are no words or links that would lead her to get spammed.

Also Askimet tends to spam non-spam threads and posts. Which we normally just unspam but having a user being constantly spammed is irritating. I understand this might be confusing, as its confusing to us too. The administrator has done just about everything he can do.

This hasn’t happened to anyone else. But we do fear that it might later on. I guess askimet views her as a spambot when she isnt. She has been registered for nearly two years and has never once really been in trouble with the rules.

[@johnhiler Member 14 years, 10 months ago]

This sounds like something that happened to one of my members. Has she been inadvertently bozo’d?

https://bbpress.org/forums/tags/bozo

You can also use this plugin to allow certain users to “skip akismet”:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/skip-akismet/

(“You can also use the profile checkbox for ignoring “throttle limit” to specifiy skipping for individual users.” <– that’s the key line)

I have found Akismet to be a decent failsafe for spam, but it’s not really suitable for use as the primary spam catcher for a message board! I’ve had great results using plugins that allow long-time members to skip the akismet process entirely…

Good luck!

[@submachiner Member 14 years, 10 months ago]

Not sure about her being hit with Bozo. But after looking up the link you provided, that could be the culprit. But if it is, why would the system go and label a user as spam? Especially when the user has never made any kind of spam content.

I don’t see much point in Akismet considering lately its been spamming non-spam then spam. But would there be any repercussions of turning the system off? And maybe if there is something more “suitable” that can replace the spam system?

I’ve forwarded this over to the admin. Hopefully this helps. Thanks for the reply and support

[@johnhiler Member 14 years, 10 months ago]

I came across some disturbing bugs with Bozo, including the “random users are being marked as Bozos” one mentioned above… I don’t know if it’s fixed now, but it caused so many problems I figured I didn’t need the headaches.

Akismet comes and goes in terms of quality: it’s usually fairly reliable, but then it will freak out for a week or two and produce lots of false positives. That’s why I’ve come up with so many ways to route around it…

I still find it useful, but Akismet probably shouldn’t be checking posts by Admins or users with lots of posts already in the system… that’s just begging for problems!