Wrongfully Flagged As Spam By Akismet?

For the past few days I’ve had some real trouble trying to comment on other blogs. I would make a comment, and it would seem like nothing happened. No “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” message would show up. Same story even with blogs I’ve had previously approved comments on.

I started to suspect that for some reason my comments weren’t getting through because I was being flagged by Akismet’s spam filter. I confirmed this suspicion this morning when I left a comment on a friend’s blog, and they informed me that I was indeed getting flagged by Akismet.

Remember, Akismet is used on thousands upon thousands of blogs to stop comment spam. Every time I would make a comment, it would be relegated “Akismet Spam” page. People don’t check this page as frequently as their non-spam comments. Although some may check it from time to time for the occasional false positive.

No, I didn’t overreact and start drafting some massive “Why you shouldn’t use Akismet” blog post. I simply posted this tweet and just a couple hours later, I received this response from Mark Riley of Automattic. This totally caught me by surprise, as I was definitely not expecting this issue to be resolved by a quick tweet.

So why was I marked as spam in the first place? I have no clue, other than the fact it had something to do with my URL (http://www.themelab.com). I’m just glad it could be resolved so quickly. Thanks Akismet!