I’m using a new spam filter on this site and it has blocked some legitimate comments. Two were from Delmer and one was from Bob.
The spam tool is Defensio and I tried it because Spam Karma and Akismet were holding too many comments in moderation, and they were all duds.
It’s a fine line: hold spam comments for review or block good comments for review. I was hoping that Defensio would clear Delmer after I approved his first comment, but that didn’t happen.
I’m not surprised or concerned that Bob’s political throwaway comment was blocked. He gave his email address as bobhawk@google.com and a search engine for his web address. That took guts; he must be proud of himself.
These articles might be of interest:
Its an interesting situation to be in, Michael, I find that Akismet does the job most times. The value is in the fact that every time we identify a "spam" comment which got through, Akismet continues to learn.
I’m having fewer and fewer comments get into the moderation queue as time goes on. Then again, I have fewer and fewer real people tending to comment and those that do are already "approved" by the system.
I don’t use Spam Karma at all. I used Bad Behavior for a while, which dealt with the bots, but I haven’t been using it since moving to the current hosting and have found that I have had no increases in spam.
Good luck with finding your solution