Akismet Spam is a shit

If those two aren’t working for you then check these resources:
Plugins/Spam_Tools
Combating_Comment_Spam

If Akismet and SK2 are BOTH tagging your incoming comments as spam, they MUST LOOK LIKE SPAM. Posted through proxies or scripts? Lots of spam-ish keywords?

I don’t know the guts of Akismet, but assume it uses something like the SpamAssassin heuristic spam detection — comparing comments you (or the entire WP community!) has flagged as spam previously with incoming comments, and based upon a ‘grade’ it decides whether the new one is spam.

SK2 does something similar, though opposed to necessarily comparing the overall ‘fingerprint’, it has TONS of individual tests, each of which add to the ‘karma’ of the given comment. Something with a bad karma rating is thus tagged as spam.

My own CG-AntiSpam is similar to SK in terms of it uses a bunch of individual sanity checks on the comment to decide if it should be tagged as spam, but I don’t ‘grade’ each sub-test (which SK2 does, and Akismet might, and SpamAssassin for emails certainly does…).

So, before you go looking for alternates, I’d look at the actual comments and what the content is, how they’re getting posted, etc. Also, look at the built-in comment moderation settings, as proxy tests, keyword checks, etc. might be being tested by WP itself.

-d

ok, thanks you both

I find it extremely rare that Akismet marks a valid comment as spam. As in once per month, tops.

Although I do admit that I like Bad Behavior better, as it simply cut down the inflow of spam silently. Still, I understand that with a complete block like this, you have to err on the side of caution, which is why Akismet still comes in handy to catch the remainder.