Posts from Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Wanted: Akismet Warning Plugin

Published 17 years, 1 month past

Okay, with my WordPress install mostly stabilized (I even fixed the archive paging!), I have a LazyWeb request for all you WP hackers.  What I want is very simple:  a WP 2.x plugin that notifies a commenter when their comment has been condemned to the Akismet queue.  I’ve had a few legitimate comments suffer that fate, and I imagine there have been more I never saw, so it’s something I’d really like to have (and something I think other people would also find useful).

At the most basic level, all I really want is for the plugin to die() with a message telling the commenter that their comment has been Akismetted and that they should contact the site administrator about it if they’re legitimate.  If instead of dying it gave that message upon returning them to the post on which they commented, the way “Your message is awaiting moderation” works, that would be extra-cool.  Either way, it obviously only fires if the comment has been marked spam.

I’m guessing this is a pretty simple plugin to write.  I did attempt to write it myself, but was spectacularly unsuccessful in the attempt.  The really frustrating part is that I think I got close to making it work, but, in the end, failed badly.  Then I asked for plugin help on IRC, but nobody noticed.  So I’m throwing the request out to the audience here to see what y’all can do.  Thanks to anyone who can help!

Update 5 Feb 07: Mark Jaquith has come through with Antispam Collateral Condolences, a plugin that does exactly what I requested.  It can put up the warning either as a JavaScript alert box, or a message embedded in the page upon returning them to the post on which they commented.  Totally, completely awesome.  You rock, Mark!


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