Thanks for the links. This got bumped down on our dev list, but we'll take another look at this to possibly bump it back up.
Here's part of the story behind this. Akismet filters out a ton of spam, and when you take all of the WordPress sites running IntenseDebate, the number of spam caught by Akismet is massive.
ID imports comments made in WordPress, and for a while spam flooded our importer which caused issues with importing legitimate non-spam comments. At the time, the best way to solve that issue and to ensure that we imported the good stuff in a timely manner, was to stop importing spam caught by Akismet.
We realize that the workaround I mentioned above isn't ideal, and we'll take another look at this.