Christopher Finke

Yes, we’ll continue to watch for any missed spam and make adjustments accordingly.

No, it’s not intended as a defense against unwelcome user signups.

We’ll keep it in mind as an official feature, but in the meantime, you could enable this behavior by adding a plugin like this:

<?php

add_action( 'init', function () {
  if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
    remove_action( 'preprocess_comment', array( 'Akismet', 'auto_check_comment' ), 1 ); 
  }
}, 99 );

This worked on my site when I saved it as wp-content/mu-plugins/akismet-no-logged-in-check.php, but you’ll want to test and confirm that it works for you before deploying it.

I used legit data from past form submissions to populate my test submissions.

For example, this was the body of one submission marked as “not spam”:

Please share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other PleasPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information about yourself that you would like us to know about you. (Limit 250 - 500 wordsPlease share any other information ab[...]

Another submission simply copied and pasted multiple copies of the questions from the form into the reply box. These are both typical spam responses — repetitive non-original content.

If you’d like to re-enable Akismet, submit the form using your own information and real responses (even if the actual information in them is made-up), and I can confirm whether or not it’s still being caught as spam.

Can you email us at support@akismet.com with your API key or website URL so we can look at specifically why they’re being caught as spam? We should be able to address it pretty quickly through that medium.

Akismet should function fine with all of those functions disabled (inasmuch as WordPress itself will continue to function).

I’m not sure I understand; these are all PHP functions that, if you have appropriate access, you can use in your scripts and plugins in whatever manner you choose. Akismet wouldn’t have anything to do with that.