// Internet Duct Tape

Greasemonkey Script: Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress

akismet-auntie-spam-angry-old-teacher-lady.jpgAkismet Auntie Spam is a maintenance script for WordPress administrators. One of the problems with the Akismet spam protection service is that sometimes it misidentifies a real comment as spam. WordPress has a spam recovery console that I like to call the spam inbox.

Have you ever stuck your hand as far back at you can into the crannies of your couch and pulled out what you found? That’s kind of what going into the default Akismet spam inbox is like. It’s a dark and evil place, filled with things that will make your eyes burn. You only wanted to find the quarter you lost, but before you know it your hand is stuck and something is touching you back.

Akismet Auntie Spam is a kind old lady who will come to your house and give it a thorough cleaning. She’s not afraid of the dark corners, particularly the spam inbox because she knows exactly how to handle the creepy crawlies hiding out of sight.

Akismet Auntie Spam is not a WordPress plugin. It is a script for the Firefox web browser that will work with any installation of WordPress or WordPress Multi-user — that means you can use it with WordPress.com, Edublogs.org, Blogsome.com and any site that is running WordPress with Akismet. Version 2 is a complete rewrite from scratch, and it is much less complicated now. There are no knobs and buttons for users to twiddle with — it works out of the box, the same way for everyone. Auntie Spam is here for one reason and that’s to save you time.

Akismet Auntie Spam is in no way affiliated with WordPress or Auttomatic — it’s a script I created to make it a hell of a lot easier to watch out for false spam.

How to Install

What Does Akismet Auntie Spam Do?

Much less time is spent navigating your spam inbox. You can see it all on one page, and it doesn’t take nearly as long to scroll through as it would without Akismet Auntie Spam installed.

  • Fetches all of your spam comments and displays them on one page.
  • Sorts spammers by the amount of spam they’ve sent.
  • Shows only the first line of spam, so less time is spent scrolling.
  • Completely hide obvious spam.
  • Automatically checks for a new version of itself every two weeks.

Show Me How It Works

Go to your spam inbox on your WordPress dashboard console.

wordpress comments akismet dashboard

Auntie Spam will immediately kick in and download all of the spam at once — no navigating between 10s to 100s of individual pages of spam.

Akismet Auntie Spam will automatically download all of your spam

You can do something else like check your RSS feeds while she grabs all of your spammy comments and organizes them.

Auntie Spam has finished downloading

Spam is sorted from newest to oldest and categorized from most spammy to least spammy. She groups spam by identifying the computer it came from, so surprisingly enough the more spam you have the easier it is to look through it all. She even summarizes it all by only showing the first line.

Spam is compressed - only the first line

Auntie Spam hates those idiots who keep sending you spam again and again. They can be completely ignored.

obvious spam is completely hidden

As you read through all the comment summaries, you may come across one that looks like it isn’t spam. Click on the ‘# comments’ link and Auntie Spam will show you the full text of the comment and give you the option to mark it as not spam.

Click to see the full comment and to mark it as not spam

Once all the spam is loaded there no need to reload it all because you want to search for something specific — hit Ctrl+F and use Firefox’s built in page search.

Search from within your browser instead of using the website

When it comes to de-spamming marked comments, or deleting all comments, Auntie Spam gets out of the way and things work the same way they always have.

despaming or deleting all comments

all spam deleted -- no spam found

If Auntie Spam is doing something you don’t want here to, you can return to way things have always been with a single click on the Greasemonkey icon and reloading the page.

turn greasemonkey on and off

What Are You Waiting For?

If you’re running WordPress and you’ve ever had to go dumpster diving for a comment that was accidentally marked as spam then you need Akismet Auntie Spam.

Like it? Link it!

I’m glad you find it useful. I have too much spam and the regular Akismet view didn’t cut it for me.

Show your appreciation by linking to this page: http://internetducttape.com/tools/wordpress/akismet-auntie-spam/

More Scripts

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153 Responses

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  1. adam said, on January 10, 2007 at 6:40 am

    very awesome, thank you!

  2. SneakerPimp said, on January 10, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    Very nice script, thank you!

  3. The Rooster said, on January 10, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    I was thinking it was just my blog. Yeah the spam is up and up in a big way. As you know I usually check my spam for genuine comments but the volume that I have been getting has made this next to impossible due to the time that it takes.

    Nice work on the script I’ll have to give it a crack.

  4. engtech said, on January 10, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    Tell me about it. My Akismet queue has 3000 for the past two weeks.

  5. engtech said, on January 11, 2007 at 12:56 am

    Updated so it should work for any wordpress install, not just wordpress.com

  6. mpb said, on January 11, 2007 at 5:41 am

    Thank you. This is so slick.

    Also, thanks for the mods. I’ve mentioned this to the edublogses. (edublogs.org learnerblogs.org uniblogs.org eslblogs.org)

  7. vjp said, on January 11, 2007 at 7:12 am

    Cool! This is great.

  8. ffextensionguru said, on January 12, 2007 at 8:29 am

    Cool works very well. Worked fine with:

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2pre) Gecko/20070111 BonEcho/2.0.0.2pre ID:2007011103

  9. EclecticGeek said, on January 13, 2007 at 1:37 am

    Sweet! Thanks for the great work.

  10. Rick said, on January 15, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    It works very well – the only change I had to make was to alter the target from edit-comments.php to edit.php – presumably this is something to do with the WP theme I am using.

  11. Fix4RSO said, on March 17, 2007 at 7:15 am

    This script is FRIGGIN’ AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

    Thank you SOOO much, ’cause I haven’t even gotten around to doing this myself! I was thinking that if I could just have a quick list that I could scan, it’d make it easier to blow through all the spam-cruft!

    T A N X A M I L L I O N ! ! !

  12. Maureen Francis said, on March 18, 2007 at 8:21 am

    I am getting about one thousand spam comments a day lately. It is driving me crazy to try to look for false positives, so I just don’t.

  13. colbert said, on March 18, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    great script. thanks a lot….

  14. engtech said, on March 23, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    I should add a feature where you can put keywords to ignore for the author name — to completely hide the spam you’re sure about.

  15. John Feeney said, on April 30, 2007 at 11:04 am

    Hi engtech,

    Auntie Spam is indispensible. I installed it as soon as my level of spam got high enough to really need it. That was a couple of weeks ago. Akismet has been pretty accurate since then, and only today sent a legit comment to the spam category. My only problem was, I couldn’t find a way to mark it as “not spam” in order to de-spam it. I had to temporarily disable Auntie Spam, return the the regular interface, mark it as “not spam,” and de-spam it that way. Am I missing something somewhere?

    Thanks for your nice tools/features to use with the wp.com software. It’s nice to be able to customize a little even though we’re on the hosted version of wp.

  16. engtech said, on April 30, 2007 at 11:27 pm

    @john: I’ve never seen that before.

    I just deleted my copy of it, reinstalled Akismet Auntie Spam, and double checked and I was able to see the “not spam” checkbox. It’s on the gray line.

    The “not spam” box is removed for the lines that were turned red because of spam keywords… was the comment one of those?

  17. John Feeney said, on May 01, 2007 at 12:28 am

    Ah yes, it was a legit comment that was red. Actually, the commenter just pasted a whole article into a comment. (which we’ve had to have a little talk about in terms of copyright :) ) There must be some keyword in there. No biggie. It’s not likely to happen more than rarely, I think. Good to know what’s going on. Thanks.

  18. engtech said, on May 01, 2007 at 3:36 am

    Ah, that explains it.

    I’ll leave the “not spam” line in for the red ones too in the future.

  19. John Feeney said, on May 09, 2007 at 12:09 pm

    You know, I’m not even sure it would be so good to leave the “not spam” line in for the red ones. What I encountered was, I think, really rare. And if the line would take up more space, as it does now for the yellow ones (I get about 95% red) I’m not sure it would be worth it. Once every couple of months I can disable the utility, and despam a legit comment that happens to be red. I don’t think it will happen more often than that. (I think it was just because the commenter pasted a whole article in a comment, so it had so many words that one or two turned out to be spam words.) Just my thoughts at the moment.

  20. engtech said, on July 31, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Ever have one of those weeks? Akismet has decided that all comments from me are spam and there’s nothing I can do about it, other than politely emailing the blogs I regularly post to and asking them to go dumpster diving for me.

    I’ve updated my Akismet Auntie Spam script for Firefox so that
    — Hovering over the “super compressed” spam gives you a preview with an option to mark it as not spam.
    — You can edit the script and enter keywords that you want to see pointed out as NOT SPAM. This is great for putting in your own blog name, or for putting in friends who always get marked as spam.

  21. mpb said, on August 01, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    I installed the new version then noticed the earlier versions were also installed. I have disabled what seems to be the earlier ones (there’s a date in the July release).

    I assume I can delete the earlier ones entirely after I make sure the new script functions?

  22. engtech said, on August 02, 2007 at 12:44 am

    Yuppers!

    Unintended side effect of switching from engtech.wordpress.com to internetducttape.com… registered as a different script.

    whoopsies

  23. Lorelle VanFossen said, on August 03, 2007 at 9:24 pm

    Engtech:

    You need to be more specific IN the post instructions (not comments) on the new features and how to use them. I finally figured out how to open the script and edit it, though I don’t know if I did it right, and then upload it to Greasemonkey but it’s not working. There’s something I’m missing and I’m anxious to try out the new features.

  24. engtech said, on August 03, 2007 at 10:08 pm

    @Lorelle: I’ve updated the documentation on this page (see: Advanced Users).

    I’m trying to figure out a good way of doing settings like that inline instead of requiring people to edit script… but Greasemonkey doesn’t have a built-in UI library.

  25. engtech said, on August 03, 2007 at 10:08 pm

    And yes, that comment was just marked as spam.

    I hate you, Akismet.

  26. Lorelle VanFossen said, on August 04, 2007 at 11:41 am

    The comment from me or you? You, I understand. Me, that’s ANOTHER issue. :D

    I’ll check out the documentation.

    Is there a way to get Greasemonkey to add variables through the options and hold them in a file? Then let the script call the variables for the keyword that the user wants to include or not include in the highlighting feature.

  27. engtech said, on August 04, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    @Lorelle: It’s my comments it’s chucking into akismet. Every comment on every blog everywhere. Sigh.

    Yup, you can configure greasemonkey to store variables… I just have to figure out how to build a reliable user interface in HTML and have it pop up.

  28. John Feeney said, on August 05, 2007 at 2:04 am

    “Hovering over the “super compressed” spam gives you a preview with an option to mark it as not spam.”

    That was a brilliant solution. Even though I have not had a false positive among those red, “super compressed” comments since my last post here (a tribute to Auntie Spam’s accuracy, I think?), the next time I do, it will be easy to mark as “not spam.” Thanks!

  29. engtech said, on August 09, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    @John Feeney:

    Let me know if the way comments pop out when you hover over red is too annoying. I might be able to use another technique where put an icon or something and if only pops up if you hover over that icon.

  30. John Feeney said, on August 10, 2007 at 1:51 am

    engtech,

    It doesn’t bother me at this point. I think it kind of did right at first, but I quickly learned just to scan the entries visually and only mouse over them if I wanted to look at one more closely. But, yeah, that would be a little better to use an icon as you mention. Not a big deal, but it would be a small improvement.

  31. engtech said, on August 10, 2007 at 11:05 am

    @John Feeney:

    I think I’ll do it. I’m finding it annoying without it. I also want to make it easier to change settings as per Lorelle.

    Adding autoscroll would be neat, too.

  32. John Feeney said, on August 15, 2007 at 10:31 pm

    Yeah, actually I think it would be a good tweak.

  33. engtech said, on August 16, 2007 at 11:51 pm

    I’m completely re-writing AkismetAuntieSpam. New version is pretty sweet right now. :)

    Will run very nicely at identifying spam with no configuration changes required.

  34. engtech said, on August 20, 2007 at 8:11 pm

    I’m looking for user feedback on the new Akismet Auntie Spam.

    Install it here:

    http://internet-duct-tape.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/greasemonkey/akismetauntiespamforword.user.js

    It won’t be official until it’s been bruised up by real people.

  35. John Feeney said, on August 22, 2007 at 10:10 pm

    engtech,

    I uninstalled the previous version and installed the newest one (yesterday) from the link in your comment above. But it didn’t seem to work. (saw the standard wordpress.com screen for spam) It showed a message which read something like, “Ack! Couldn’t find the number of pages!” Thoughts?

  36. engtech said, on August 23, 2007 at 12:11 am

    Looks like you have no spam!

    I’ll improve that message.

  37. John Feeney said, on August 23, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    But then I waited till I got a spam (didn’t take long) and just got the standard wordpress page with the whole message in full. I’ll give it another go and report back.

  38. John Feeney said, on August 23, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    That didn’t take long. I just had a chance to deal with a couple of spam twice in 5 minutes. I’m just getting the standard wordpress view of them.

    FYI, I just went tools > greasmonkey > manage user scripts, and clisked uninstall. Then I installed from the link above. Maybe I need to restart firefox?

  39. John Feeney said, on August 23, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Restarting didn’t help, and I’m able to switch back to the previous version with no problem. Hmmm…

  40. engtech said, on August 23, 2007 at 5:11 pm

    @John Feeney:

    I’ve released v2.0 now. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7037

    2007/08/23
    – Rewrote from scratch using IP filtering idea from Donncha.
    – Will now fetch all of your spam comments and display them on one page.
    – Groups by the originating IP address.
    – Because it groups by IP address, the more spam you have, the more likely it is to
    correctly identify spam!
    – Sorted by the least number of spam comments to the most number of spam comments.
    – IP addresses with more than 5 comments are hidden (as the are likely spammers).
    – Can easily check the hidden text by moving your mouse over the parts that say [hidden]
    – Surprisingly much faster than the old version! (less code, too)
    – No longer has any confusing configuration options — does the right thing all the time.
    – Automatically checks for script updates every two weeks.

    #respond

  41. John Feeney said, on August 23, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    Engtech,

    I tried a bunch of stuff (disabled all extenstions, uninstalled and reinstalled greasemonkey as well as Auntie Spam, etc.). Still getting only the standard wordpress.com page when I look at spam. When I have no spam I get the message ~ “You have no spam.” But when I have spam I get, “ACK! Couldn’t find the number of pages!”

    Thoughts?

  42. engtech said, on August 23, 2007 at 10:13 pm

    @John Feeney:

    Definitely a bug with not handling one page of spam well. Thanks!

    Script is fixed now.

  43. John Feeney said, on August 23, 2007 at 11:20 pm

    Yep, it’s working fine now. Thanks.

  44. engtech said, on September 13, 2007 at 12:17 am

    2007/09/12
    – Newest spam displays first
    – Akismet search doesn’t function well with Auntie Spam, so use browser search instead (Ctrl+F)
    – Added logo branding
    – Screenshots explaining upfront how it works

  45. engtech said, on September 17, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    2007/09/17 version 2.03
    – Added FirebugUtils to prevent console.logs from breaking the script
    – Changed to work with the AdminSSL plugin. Thanks to Jan @ http://wp.dembowski.net/

  46. Baxter Tocher said, on September 18, 2007 at 10:48 am

    This is wonderful, thanks! No more scrolling through screeds of endless adverts for cars and “enhancements” (bizarrely, the latest trick seems to be starting the spam off by apologising, like that’ll make us leave that garbage there, since the scum were so pleasant).

    Excellent stuff.

  47. engtech said, on September 18, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    @Baxter Tocher:

    I’m glad you like it, Baxter. I find it really takes the ‘chore’ out of searching for false spam. For a lot of people that isn’t that big of a deal, but I find that for me there are always a few comments that get marked as spam — especially my own.

  48. Pascal Van Hecke said, on October 09, 2007 at 5:31 am

    Hi,

    The script only works in English.
    I’ve posted a hack at http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7037

  49. David Bradley said, on October 12, 2007 at 2:01 am

    As you know, I’ve blogged about Auntie on several occasions, but one thing about WordPress that continues to bug me is that even though I blacklisted certain words in Discussion options so that comments containing those words should be deleted automatically I seem to still see them in Akismet. Is it that Akismet traps comments before WordPress gets a chance to kick in with its blacklist. If so, is there a a way around this, I’d rather get rid of them rightaway and only have a page or two of Auntie’s comments to scroll through rather than the daily 6 or 7 that Akismet captures.

    Any thoughts?

    db

  50. engtech said, on October 12, 2007 at 9:28 am

    @David Bradley:

    I’ve sent a bug about this before. My experience is that it only seems to catch keywords in the body of the text, not in the name, email, and url like they indicate in the configuration page.

  51. David Bradley said, on October 12, 2007 at 9:30 am

    That *would* explain it. It would also explain why it doesn’t seem to work as an IP blocker either.

    It would be nice if it could be fixed even with Auntie watching over me, it’s still a pain to have to scroll through pages of comments spams (actually most days I don’t, I just delete them all in one fell swoop)

    db

  52. mpb said, on October 14, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    Howdy. I’ve been trying to use the newest version. However, it loads without any spam. Then it seems to start reading the spam on the server, and takes forever on dial-up. I’ve never had it finish and finally had to disable it.

    A couple of times, Auntie Spam said there was one number of spam and Akismet said there were other numbers (I have screenshots)

    Is it a problem just for us on dial-up? The earlier versions worked fine.

  53. Dougal Campbell said, on November 09, 2007 at 11:47 am

    @David: the blacklist feature in WP merely flags comments as spam, it doesn’t auto-delete them. This has always been the case. That’s why they show up in Akismet/AuntieSpam.

    @engtech: With Auntie 2.04, I don’t see the checkbox for flagging a comment as not-spam. Is it just me, or is it a bug?

  54. trademark search said, on November 14, 2007 at 12:07 am

    I have the problem of having my own comments on my own personal blog getting marked as spam. I always thought that was strange. But this has seemed to fix that! Thanks!

  55. engtech said, on November 14, 2007 at 5:07 pm

    @trademark search:

    It’s probably because your using the text ‘trademark search’ to go the secureyourtrademark.com website.

    I’m still not sure if your comment is real or spam and wondering if I should mark it as spam.

  56. engtech said, on November 15, 2007 at 3:13 am

    2007/11/15 version 2.06
    – optimized, optimized, optimized
    – only displays 5000 comments per page to avoid stressing slower computers
    – will work for any language (not just english anymore)
    – any additional slowness is because of a bug on the WordPress end that makes you download the same spam over and over again: http://dev.wp-plugins.org/ticket/722
    – my home PC can download and display 5000 spam in 30 seconds

  57. engtech said, on November 15, 2007 at 3:19 am

    @Pascal Van Hecke:

    Thanks for reporting that bug. I’ve removed my dependence on English text in the new version (2.06). Let me know if you have any problems with it.

  58. engtech said, on November 15, 2007 at 3:33 am

    @Dougal Campbell:

    In order to flag a comment as non-spam you have to first click on the “# comments” link. It lets me squeeze more on to one page. :)

  59. engtech said, on November 15, 2007 at 3:36 am

    @mpb:

    I’ve released a new version 2.06 of Auntie Spam that is much faster. It may still be slow on dial-up because of the sheer amount of spam that has to be downloaded in some cases.

    The different numbers is WordPress’ fault. I go by the number in the dashboard tab to start with, and then switch to the actual amount of spam comments I found once it’s done. I find they’re always off by a few.

  60. Edith Frost said, on November 15, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    Thanks for your plugin, it’s a big timesaver! I was wondering if it’d be possible to tweak this a little to get it to work with GreaseKit for Safari. I tried, and it *almost* wants to work but not quite. (The first page loads up without any special Auntie Spam-related markup, but then when you delete all your spam you get the IDT logo-box.)

  61. mpb said, on November 15, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Many thanks. I tested it here which had only the one spam (but multi-tasking on e-mail, Firefox multi=tabs, Opera multi-tabs, GreatNews, etc.) Doesn’t sound like an improvement, perhaps, but it truly is for me. (My WordPs are next.)

    “Auntie took 29.156 seconds to download and display 1 spam comments.”
    http://cerebraloddjobs.edublogs.org/ wp-admin/edit-comments.php?page=akismet-admin

  62. engtech said, on November 15, 2007 at 4:37 pm

    2007/11/15 version 2.07
    – bug fix: improved slowness of displaying hidden comments
    – added menu option for checking for updates right now
    – added menu option for configuring how much spam to download at a time for modem users

  63. Juergen Kreileder said, on November 16, 2007 at 7:37 am

    2.07 has an undefined “crashme” in auntieDownloadSpam(). Apart from that both 2.06 and 2.07 don’t work for me anymore. It doesn’t download an spam comments at all, it always says “Auntie Spam has put 0% of …”.

    Also, you probably should rethink the AdminSSL work-around. It kind of defeats the purpose of AdminSSL when admins start accessing non-SSL pages again.
    Besides, I use a different strategy for securing the admin area. My admin pages can only be accessed via HTTPS. That means I have to change your script code every time you release a new version.

    One more thing: The links in auntiePager() won’t work if WP isn’t installed top-level.

  64. engtech said, on November 16, 2007 at 11:41 am

    @Juergen Kreileder:

    gah. That was dumb of me. I’ve releases 2.08 that fixes the crashme bug I left in while I was debugging yesterday.

    I’ve added a menu function that lets you permanently toggle between http or https for accessing since what’s needed for your workaround… it’s going to have to be a manual set once fix because AdminSSL needs for it to be http instead of https to work (althought… maybe not anymore since I’ve switch from using the greasemonkey xmlhttprequest to the browser xmlhttprequest).

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/7037.user.js

    Try it out, let me know what you think.

  65. engtech said, on November 16, 2007 at 11:41 am

    2007/11/15 version 2.08
    – bug fix: fixed a stupid debug statement that was breaking 2.07
    – added menu option for switching between HTTP and HTTPS for accessing Auntie Spam

  66. Juergen Kreileder said, on November 16, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    Thanks for the HTTPS thing!

    There’s still one link in auntiePager() that has a hardcoded wpadmin path.

    And I found the reason why it didn’t display any comments: You look for id=’comment-(\d+)’ but vanilla WordPress 2.3.1 seems to use ” instead of ‘.
    Matching id=[‘”]comment-(\d+)[‘”] fixes the problem for me.
    (That’s a ‘ followed by a ” in the square brackets)

  67. engtech said, on November 16, 2007 at 1:58 pm

    @Juergen Kreileder:

    Thanks so much for finding these problems so quickly.

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/7037.user.js

    Both probs fixed and 2.09 is released.

  68. Jan Karlsbjerg said, on November 18, 2007 at 3:33 am

    I love your script!

    I just upgraded the script to 2.09 and found two problems:

    – I had to change the “included pages” to:
    http*://*/wp-admin/admin.php?page=akismet-admi*
    I think it was set to “edit-comments.php” instead of “admin.php”

    – The IP addresses are no longer shown. I usually take the IP addresses of the people/bots who’ve submitted 20+ spam comments and exclude their IPs completely from my site.

    I run WordPress 2.3.1, the current version as I’m writing this.

    Cheers from Vancouver,
    Jan

  69. engtech said, on November 18, 2007 at 12:04 pm

    @Jan Karlsbjerg:

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/7037.user.js

    IP addresses are displayed again, and admin.php was included to the list of URLs. :)

  70. Jan Karlsbjerg said, on November 18, 2007 at 7:06 pm

    Thanks! Love the quick turn-around, too. :-)

  71. Will said, on December 05, 2007 at 10:14 pm

    I was wondering if this seems correct. This is the second time I have tried Auntie Spam and the same thing happens. I see people talking about red lines, yellow lines, and first lines, but I never see any lines. It will tell me that there are ‘x’ number of spam comments, but nothing is ever shown. Is this OK?

  72. engtech said, on December 05, 2007 at 10:53 pm

    @Will:

    That’s strange — you should be seeing some kind of list of spam.

    How much spam do you have?

    What version of WordPress are you using?

  73. Will said, on December 06, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    I re-read the information from above. Maybe the quote pasted below is why? Does it not even make a list if A.S. thinks the spam is “obvious”?

    “Completely hide obvious spam.”

    The below is the message A.S. gives this morning. There are 43 spams in the Akismet que since last night. And indeed A.S. seems to know that as a bit further down the page is this: “There are currently 43 comments identified as spam.”

    But there is no way for me to see any of them, even just a list or anything, unless I remove A.S. Maybe I am missing something obvious? It has been known to happen!

    I could attach a screen shot to an email if necessary.

    I use WordPress 2.3.1

  74. Will said, on December 06, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    Sorry I forgot to paste the A.S, message into the last comment. Here it is:

    Auntie Spam has put 0% of your spam comments on one page. She is only showing you the first line of the comments.

    Click on the ‘1 comments’ link to show the full comment (including the option to mark it as not-spam).

    Hit Ctrl+F to search or use Edit >> Find

    Auntie took 1.531 seconds to download and display 0 spam comments.

  75. Will said, on December 07, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    Hi Engtech – Do you have any ideas on this. I have let the spam build up to higher numbers, but it is the same thing. Nothing displayed.

    Thanks!

  76. Will said, on December 11, 2007 at 6:17 pm

    Well I let the spam build up to the hundreds and AS still did not display a list. I uninstalled the script and went back to the WP interface. I’ll check again in a few months. Maybe the third attempt will be the one.

  77. Out of control -- Chip’s Quips said, on February 06, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    […] me here on my blog instead. It gets fewer than 1000 spam comments per day, and between Akismet and Auntie Spam I manage to sort those out pretty […]

  78. Jeriko said, on February 09, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Doesn’t work for me either, it shows no spam comments at all. WordPress is 2.3.2, Akismet is 2.1.3

  79. engtech said, on February 10, 2008 at 10:33 am

    @ Jeriko:

    It should work with that version of WordPress. It’s likely a problem with either a conflicting plugin (plugins that make your wp-admin use https can cause issues, as can renaming your wp-admin directory) or a language encoding thing.

    Although, I thought I worked out the language encoding bugs a while ago.

  80. Jeriko said, on February 10, 2008 at 11:10 am

    @engtech: Ah, the WP AJAX Edit Comments plugin interferes with Auntie Spam. I guess I have to turn it off when I’m checking my spam now. Maybe you could look into it? :-)

  81. engtech said, on February 10, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    @ Jeriko:

    Sorry man, it’s kind of a black hole for trying to get it to work with all of the plugins out there. Only so much time in the day.

  82. Jeriko said, on February 13, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Duh, my bad. If Inline Comment Editing in the Admin Panel is turned off (WP AJAX Edit Comments Options), Auntie Spam works like a charm. Sorry to bother you :-)

  83. PSA: Swamped by spam? « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog said, on February 29, 2008 at 9:43 pm

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  84. Chris said, on March 23, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Any idea if/when this will be usable with WordPress 2.5?

  85. engtech said, on March 24, 2008 at 11:44 am

    @ Chris:

    I’m waiting for 2.5 to be officially released before I update it. Once WordPress.com switches to the 2.5 interface then I’ll start updating the script.

  86. Chris said, on March 24, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    A lot of people seem to be running the RC, including myself. Also, it does appear that 2.5 is going to be released soon. So why not go ahead and update the script?

  87. engtech said, on March 25, 2008 at 8:39 am

    @ Chris:

    Because my blog is running on WordPress.com.

    So I would have to download and install the RC candidate as well as a LAMP stack to run it.

    Then I would have to generate a couple of thousand fake spams on my fake blog so that there’s something in Akismet.

    It’s open source, why not send a patch if it’s really bugging you?

    I can’t update the script until I have a blog with spam running WordPress 2.5 to see what the differences are.

  88. Chris said, on March 26, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Sorry for bothering you.

  89. engtech said, on March 29, 2008 at 12:49 pm

    WordPress 2.5 support will be added mid-April.

    Unfortunately I run on WordPress.com, not self-hosted WordPress and I’m stuck here in pre-2.5 land until they do the update so I can’t fix any of my scripts/programs that break with 2.5.

  90. WordPress 2.5 said, on March 30, 2008 at 1:16 pm

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  91. jaypee said, on March 31, 2008 at 11:23 pm

    When I upgraded to WP 2.5, I was disappointed to found out that Akismet Auntie Spam doesn’t work.

    Glad to know that you’ll be updating it soon. Looking forward to the WP 2.5 version of Akismet Auntie Spam. Keep up the good work! :D

  92. Finally, WordPress 2.5! » JaypeeOnline // Blogging News & Reviews said, on April 01, 2008 at 12:46 am

    […] about upgrading to WordPress 2.5 that got me disappointed. After the upgrade, I found out that the Akismet Auntie Spam maintenance script doesn’t work. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a […]

  93. engtech said, on April 01, 2008 at 1:09 am

    @ jaypee:

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/7037.user.js

    Auntie Spam 2.20 with WP 2.5 support (still backwards compatible to 2.3)

  94. Jaypee said, on April 01, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Thanks a lot! Just downloaded and installed it. :D

  95. tigtog said, on April 09, 2008 at 7:09 pm

    Hi. Slight problem to report – I can’t despam genuine comments on wordpress.com using the latest version. The javascript to expand the comment and show the despam checkbox simply isn’t running.

  96. engtech said, on April 09, 2008 at 10:06 pm

    @ tigtog:

    Got it working again. Here you go:

    http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/7037.user.js

  97. tigtog said, on April 10, 2008 at 1:05 am

    Hey, that was fast! Thank you, I love this application.

  98. theWizard said, on April 10, 2008 at 8:45 am

    this is a lifesaver for me, thanks alot and thanks to Lorelle for mentioning this in her WordCamp 2008 presentation this works like a charm.

  99. pKay said, on April 11, 2008 at 3:04 am

    GREAT APP! Have added it, and look forward to looking at my spam/deleting junk in this way (well I would rather there be no spam but as if that will ever happen)

    Just one question though….. In one of your images above you wrote:

    “3 spam comments from the same IP address”

    … does that mean if I did not have this script installed, AKISMET would have only showed me one and just added the total count.

    For example I got 5 spam currently removed by akismet. Then I get one spam comment and it goes up to 8. THat means the other 2 were the exact same (and from the same IP address) then they wont show up. But with your script they indicate that they do?

    If that is how it is (either that or I misunderstood the picture) that is excellent!!! Thank you so much for the script.

    Keep up the great work!
    Cheers :)

  100. engtech said, on April 11, 2008 at 7:52 am

    @ pKay:

    pKay,

    You’ve misunderstood the picture :) You have it backwards, actually.

    Akismet will always show each spam by itself.

    “For example I got 5 spam currently removed by akismet. Then I get one
    spam comment and it goes up to 8. THat means the other 2 were the
    exact same (and from the same IP address) then they wont show up. But
    with your script they indicate that they do?”

    No, that’s not how Akismet works. If you have 5 spam, and you get 1
    more, then you have 6 spam, not 8. The reason it might say 8 is
    because it hides spam on posts older than about 15 days.

    So you have 6 spams in Akismet, with 3 unique IP addresses between
    them (the other 3 have the same IP address).

    With Akismet, you’ll see 6 spams.

    With Auntie Spam, you’ll see 3 spams, because it groups them by IP address.

    Auntie Spam doesn’t do anything with those 2 missing spam on the 15
    day old posts; there isn’t any way to access them no matter what
    you’re using.

  101. pKay said, on April 11, 2008 at 9:01 am

    AH my bad! Sorry, it is a bit late and I obviously need some sleep before I utter anything else that makes zero sense!

    Thank you for clearing it up for me :)

    Kind regards :)
    pKay.

  102. Avrila said, on April 11, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    I’m still having problems that I think are 2.5 related (based on when they started). It’s hanging on “Downloading __ comments in one go.” I’ve downloaded the latest version. Is this a problem that others have had?

  103. Better Blogging: Tweaking Firefox | 12 Witnesses said, on April 15, 2008 at 12:04 am

    […] Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress … If you’ve ever gotten much spam caught in the anti-spam plugin, Akismet for WordPress, you probably have been frustrated while looking for legitimate comments among the pages of spam. This is especially tedious when the spam is several thousand words long with a hundred some odd links to sites hosting medicines without prescription, porn and investments. This script recognizes that you are in Akismet and collapses all the comments into one line entries. You can expand the entry with a click if you think it is legitimate and verify. It collapses pages of spam to 1/10th the size. […]

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  105. Who Moved My Cheese? The New WordPress Admin Interface « // Internet Duct Tape said, on April 18, 2008 at 10:18 am

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  108. Will said, on May 13, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Well I am back after many months to try Auntie Spam again. You can see the trouble I had in mine and Engtech’s comments on Dec 5th through 11th, 2007.

    I am with a new host and on a newer version of WP. Still the same problem with Auntie Spam not displaying a list at all. the only thing that is the same as back in December is my theme, so I am thinking AS must not work will some themes.

    The theme I am using has an unusual headerphp file, so maybe that is the problem?

  109. c. dickson said, on May 22, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    Auntie moved in this evening and made herself right at home on my blog.

    I no longer fear the filthy, dreaded chore of wading through spam. What a tremendous relief that is.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    And thank you again!

  110. » auntie akismet spam - get some powhatan life: said, on May 22, 2008 at 11:01 pm

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  111. A bloguear con WordPress « This is a test said, on May 25, 2008 at 2:08 pm

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  112. Firefox Add-ons - Greasemonkey - Posted In Blogging | Bayu Albelly - .SlackbloG Journal said, on May 27, 2008 at 4:00 am

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  113. Kill-filing repeatedly abusive commentors « Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog said, on June 02, 2008 at 6:13 pm

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  114. 10 Questions with Chip of Chip's Quips said, on June 16, 2008 at 5:40 pm

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  115. Vancouver Blogger November Meetup recap | Jan Karlsbjerg, Ph.D - Vancouver Techie said, on June 22, 2008 at 3:11 am

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  116. vjp said, on July 03, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    I’m looking for an earlier version of the script. Using a computer with a 5″ screen, the latest version is too large.

  117. The peak of art? I’m more like the "pique" of art -- Chip’s Quips said, on July 19, 2008 at 7:04 pm

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  118. Essential WordPress Plugins | Wordprezzie said, on July 30, 2008 at 11:52 am

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  119. Power Blogging Tips: Comment on Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader « Lorelle on WordPress said, on July 30, 2008 at 7:14 pm

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  120. Add-On Of The Week - Aksimet Auntie Spam | TechGerm.com - tech news/reviews/tips/guides/info said, on August 08, 2008 at 7:09 am

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  121. cdscs said, on August 08, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    fhgfh

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  125. Jan Karlsbjerg said, on August 23, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    Thought I’d “CC” a couple of my tweets here:

    Got WordPress and Akismet? If you’re not using InternetDuctTape’s Auntie Akismet helper script, you’re doing it wrong.
    I just cleared 3257 Akismet Spam comments with absolute confidence that there were no false positives.

    (http://twitter.com/JanKarlsbjerg)

  126. ElleDoesIt said, on September 29, 2008 at 6:17 pm

    Does the script call up http://internetducttape.com/remote-login.php?login=id#….? I’d love to know what process is happening behind the scenes :)

  127. ElleDoesIt said, on October 01, 2008 at 7:37 am

    As Avrila above: “I’m still having problems that I think are 2.5 related (based on when they started). It’s hanging on “Downloading __ comments in one go.” I’ve downloaded the latest version. Is this a problem that others have had?”

    Yes. It’s unfortunately not working for me.

  128. Spawners: Did u read these ? said, on October 02, 2008 at 8:50 am

    […] Using Akismet Auntie Spam extension – Engtech tells you an easy way to check your Akismet trapped comments. After I started using it , […]

  129. esonsenup said, on October 07, 2008 at 8:17 am

    Great blog. I like layout!!!!

  130. arif said, on December 05, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Hi, are you going to update this after the release of wordpress 2.7 which already came out? It doesn’t work anymore.

  131. fiut said, on December 06, 2008 at 8:25 am

    yo

  132. Keiron said, on December 12, 2008 at 6:06 am

    A wordpress 2.7 version would be good! As I doubt just telling the greasemonkey script to look at the new URL would work, as the layout has changed so much?

  133. Jaypee said, on December 13, 2008 at 12:06 am

    One of the first things I tested after upgrading to WordPress 2.7 was Akismet Auntie Spam and was disappointed when I found out it wasn’t working. Hope there would be an update or fix so it would work on 2.7. Akismet ain’t the same without the Auntie. It makes moderating comments and browsing through the spam queue very convenient.

  134. CeKay said, on December 14, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    Yeah too bad. I just heart about this fobolous script and now on wordpress 2.7 no chance to use it.
    looking ahead for an update! Great work btw!

  135. Miriam Schwab said, on December 23, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    Same here. I LOVE Akisment Auntie Spam. It saves me every time I have to deal with the thousands of spam comments I get on my blog. So how sad was I when I went to my spam folder after upgrading to WordPress 2.7 and found that I was faced with 93 pages of spam to deal with, instead of 1 lovely Akismet Auntie spam page? Very :(

    So…any plans for an upgrade?

    Signed – a huge fan

  136. Paweł Lipiec said, on December 30, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    So it’s not only my problem – WP2.7 + this lovely script ;)

    Waiting fot upgrade :)

  137. Jan Karlsbjerg said, on January 06, 2009 at 3:15 am

    Hi engtech

    Thought I’d contribute with some more word-of-mouth marketing and more incentive to update the script to 2.7. :-)

    I got you mentioned on a recent episode of The WordPress Podcast (http://wp-community.org/) as the solution to the host’s (Charles Stricklin) problem with seeing hundreds of Akismet spam messages and not being able to find false positives.

    Cheers from Vancouver,
    Jan

  138. Peet said, on January 18, 2009 at 3:55 am

    great script. thanks a lot…. http://bestdiner.ru

  139. anonimo italiano said, on January 27, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    Well … I think we all yearn for a 2.7 compliant SA :)

  140. tigtog said, on January 28, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    Hell yes! I’m not even going to upgrade to the WP 2.7 until there’s an Auntie Spam to keep that spambucket under control!

  141. EnjoyMedia said, on March 17, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Auntie Spam is da best. Keep up the good work.
    Tanks 4 the script.

  142. jankarlsbjerg said, on March 19, 2009 at 10:24 pm

    Please, please, please!

  143. Jaypee said, on March 20, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Still no update? Has engtech stopped support/development for it? I hope not or hopefully someone can continue it or come up with something similar. I check the spam queue for legit comments and akismet auntie spam makes it so easy to go through all the spam comments.

    Please akismet auntie spam! Pretty please!

  144. Rocky said, on April 22, 2009 at 9:22 am

    I hate akismet coz my comment wont come and i am not a spammer. I filters genuine comments and won’t allow them to pass them through because of some weird algorithm it follows through. A google search might probably end up giving millions of dissatisfied akismet users who are a regular commenter but now they could not comment .. all thanks to silly akismet :-(

  145. Saraj said, on April 22, 2009 at 3:24 pm

    Oh no! I just installed this so hopefully without realizing it wouldn’t work on 7.2.x

    Now I have to find something else…

  146. Fighting Comment Spam: WordPress Comments Mass Edit Mode « Lorelle on WordPress said, on May 02, 2009 at 8:56 am

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  150. Akismet Auntie Spam Firefox-Greasemonkey Page Viewing Script « Lorelle on WordPress said, on January 10, 2015 at 9:46 pm

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