[Plugin: Spam Free WordPress] No spam, maybe, Genuine comments lost, YES!

Todd, I’m not leaving “garbage.” Your reply is rude!

I did test Spam Free by logging out of my account and leaving comments. That was a no-brainer! I submitted many different comments, mostly copies of spam marked by Akismet. It appeared to work, except that it allowed too much spam through, necessitating the use of Akismet as well. I felt no need to test it further because I got no error messages. HOWEVER, that simple test does not guarantee that it continues to work!! The comment that was lost/rejected by Spam Free was a long one. Perhaps you should warn people that Spam Free does not like long, detailed comments?

Perhaps if you had warned users that the simple test is not enough, I would not have had this problem and left this negative report.

Another thing that would really help would be preserving a comment and allowing a user to go back to it with the <Back> button on the rejection form. I thought we’d find the original comment by clicking the back button on the form, but it was gone. Not great design for commenting plugin.

What my husband experienced was definitely the result of Spam-Free with the error message regarding lack of a password or “incorrect password.” His was a real user test –from a different computer than mine. I still wonder how many others experienced the same problem.

If you have worked with others who had problems, you should know that there are some plugin conflicts. Why do you not post a list of plugins which you know conflict with Spam Free? Then users can decide which they want more –their current plugins or yours.

Others have had similar complaints. Yet you continue to assert that there are “Zero false positives.” This is simply NOT TRUE!!

Furthermore, Spam Free passed through spam that Akismet correctly identified. I have no idea why Akismet is so smart, but it sure is a lot smarter than Spam-Free. Perhaps it’s because Akismet is more mature.

There’s no point going to your “official support forum” while you continue to make exaggerated claims and you are rude to users who do not find your plugin as perfect as you make it out to be. How could you possibly know that there are zero false positives?

Your users can not know how many comments they are missing, even while they are happy that their spam folders are no longer filling up.

Of course, I uninstalled your plugin. When it comes to choosing between having to delete spam daily and missing significant comments, I’ll choose the comments any day.

Yes, I should have done more testing on a test site first. But your claims were so positive (Zero false positives!) that I rashly installed it on a high-traffic site. I will test it again on a test site when I have time. And if I can make it work and verify that it does not come up with false positives after throwing a battery of comments at it, I’ll take back my negative comment.

How do we know your last paragraph above is true? Words are cheap.

Todd, you wrote:

Everything you said in your reply proves you never read a word on this page, http://www.toddlahman.com/spam-free-wordpress/,

As a matter of fact, I read every word. Normally, you “troubleshoot” when there is a problem. If the first remedy works, that’s where you stop.

There was no problem when I tested the plugin by leaving comments that had been caught by Akismet, other than that Spam-Free did not filter them out. These may not have been comments left by bots, but Akismet is smart enough to flag them as spam. (And, by the way, in thousands of spam comments over the last few months, we have not had a false positive from Akismet. I think Akismet “learns” from comments manually marked as spam.)

But the point is that you advise:

“To test Spam Free WordPress, logout out of your WordPress account, and try to leave a comment.”

I did that, and it worked fine. So no more testing was presumably needed.

I would not have known that serious comments are blocked by Spam Free if my husband had not worked so hard on a long, serious comment, only to see it vanish into cyberspace. In your plugin, the “back” button should lead back to the original comment, which should have been stored in a temp file on the computer. But it doesn’t.

Furthermore, you do not warn people to do extensive testing for this sort of problem.

Your threatening does not demonstrate that your plugin is as you describe it:

“IThis trouble is further compounded, when you recommend in a public forum, that others avoid using my plugin on a false and uniformed basis while also making false accusations. I consider your accusations to be serious, and so should you. I will respond accordingly if you continue your attacks.”

Characterizing me as ignorant does not demonstrate the value of your plugin.

Characterizing the description of my experience as “your attacks” does not demonstrate the value of your plugin.

It seems to me that as long as you characterize users of your plugin as ignorant and the telling of their experience as “attacks,” rather than figuring out how you can improve user experience, people should be very wary of using any of your plugins.

It also seems to me that by forcing people to come to your site for support, you are controlling what appears on the WordPress forum, and thus WordPress users cannot tell how many problems people actually have with the plugin.

The bottom line is this:

Even if it worked as described, Spam-Free is not the only plugin needed to control spam. Akismet is still needed to catch manual spam.
Bloggers who value meaningful comments should do extensive and thorough testing before installing your plugin on a live site. (My mistake was that I only did the recommended test.)
Yes, Spam-Free does a good job of blocking spam with a lot of links, and that will reduce the amount of spam that needs to be deleted.
HOWEVER, it is not true that it produces “Zero false positives.” That is actually too big a claim for anyone to make, because it cannot be proven. However, it can be disproven by just one false positive–which is what I experienced.

Someone keeps marking this thread as “Resolved.” I wonder who that might be?

I’ve been testing more spam plugins. I found NoSpamNX, which looked really promising. No javascript required and no math. Local blocklist, etc., much like Todd’s plugin.

I seems to catch all spam as well as Akismet does. It seemed to work well on a test site — just as Todd’s plugin worked well on initial testing. (I have not yet done extensive testing on a test site.)
HOWever, NoSpamNX also produces false positives from comments that are thoughtful and have no earmarks of spam. It shouldn’t happen with that plugin, according to the posted design of the plugin.
The difference is that the author of NoSpamNX did not claim “No false positives.”

Back to Math Reloaded for the time being. It’s a bit of a bother for those who comment, but better than losing comments.

Just wondering whether Spam Free WordPress requires Javascript. Instructions don’t say so.