Something got me thinking about comments on my website here. Almost no one posts native replies on my posts. I’d have to think that 99.9999% of all the replies on my website are now via Webmention. Perhaps I should cut off native replies just to cut back on the amount of spam I get? Hmmm….

@c Two things come to mind: 1. the online niche you are in is mostly Indiieweb so that skews the stats a bit, 2. micro posts don't attract native comments the way long essays would.

I look at native comments a bit like emergency flashers on your car: most of the time you forget they are there, but when you or somebody needs them they are vital. Akismet and AntiSpam Bee seems to keep most of the spam at bay for me but I don't have the volume of traffic you do.

@pauljacobson It varies from a couple hundred a day in general and up to thousands on occasion.

@bradenslen Sometimes I don't think it's even volume driven, and often I suspect it's based more on having been put on lists by spammers for their convenience.

You're definitely right about emergency flashers, and it's exactly the reason I wouldn't turn the comment functionality off. In fact there are specifically two or three people who use them on occasion and just for their interactions I'd put up with 10 times the amount of spam I'm getting because I value them that much.

It's not too dissimilar to some of the refback spam I get for a very small handful of worthwhile notifications I've seen on the open internet that I would have otherwise been blind to seeing.

@c I does sound like you are on a spam list.

@c Good grief! I hope Akismet is catching most of that?

@pauljacobson It catches the vast majority. My problem is the 2-3 false positives every week that I find very valuable.