Will

I use a combination of methods for my site that work pretty well. First, I use the wordpress built-in mod features to require at least one approved post to show up on the site in the first place, combined with anything with multiple links going straight to moderation. Certain words cause it to go straight to spam.

I then use Akismet with the “worst offenders” extension to it. This lists the people who spam me constantly which allows me to delete their spam comments without having to wade through them, and then manually search a much smaller list for legitimate false positives (which are rare but do happen now and again).

When I see the same offenders popping up a lot in my list, I block them from accessing my websites in the first place. It cuts back drastically on server resources and on spam.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn’t take long to set up and is easy to maintain once it is there. Plus, I don’t annoy my users with captchas and such (although the summing game is much less annoying since I have no problem reading it and can do simple arithmetic in my head).