- How does it work?
When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your blog it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.

- What stops the system from being gamed?
Well without giving too much of the secret sauce away, we can safely say that it would be pretty difficult to poison Akismet. We use dozens of factors to determine the spamminess of a submission, and we also have an identity attached to everyone using and contributing to the system, which allows us to do some interesting things with weighting and clustering activity.

- Help! Akismet is catching a regular comment as spam!
Don’t worry, if you see a regular comment on your Akismet page, just click the “Not Spam” checkbox and submit and the comment will be sent back to Akismet as a mistake. The system will learn from your submission, though it may take a day or so in some cases. False positives, as they’re called, are extremely rare and we watch them closely.

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My comments are often held for moderation, because Askimet has returned my comment with a Thumbs Down. That means that according to their rules, I’m a spammer. Now, I’d rather not BE a spammer, but I have no idea what the problem is! I wish I knew. Seems clear though that not only won’t they tell me, they won’t tell Book either?

If there’s anyway for me to learn how to avoid being marked as a spammer, I’d like to know!

Either that… or if I’m not a spammer, then Askimet does a FAR WORSE job with false positives than they advertise. I’m in software, so I’m well aware that software claims are often as dubious as those of politicians.

Don’t miss this really funny video about Obama in Star Wars. It’s actually funnier if you just listen to it instead of watch it.

has a post up about a Special Forces group that was ambushed by a company + strength Taliban force south of Kandahar.