UPDATE: Just after posting this, I logged in to FeedLounge for a little evening RSS reading and saw Andy Skelton’s post about adding stats to WordPress.com. Who knows, maybe Matt and the gang are way ahead of me on this and Akismet will get a little stats-lovin’ while they’re at it!
You know, I find Akismet to be pretty kick ass overall. The ironic part is that I actually commented about such a service on someone’s post about SPAM only a week or so prior to the announcement of Akismet. I guess that’s the story of my life: a day late and a dollar short.
Well, as great as Akismet is (with my enhanced plugin, of course), there’s something I’d like to see which can really only be done (effectively) on their end: statistics!
I’d love to see a page (likely in your Wordpress.com Dashboard) that lists several statistics:
- Which blogs are using my API key?
I’m using my API key on about 4 different blogs, and I’d like to have a list of which ones I’m using where. - What have those blogs been up to?
- How many messages have been checked for each one?
- How many of those messages were SPAM and how many were HAM?
- How many messages have been manually marked as SPAM for each one?
- How many messages have been manually marked as HAM for each one?
- What was the last User Agent that polled the Akismet service?
This would help me track down any of my blogs using outdated / different plugin versions (assuming they all report something unique as the User Agent, like the original Akismet plugin does).
Now you could take this data and skin it 30 different ways. Anywhere from just plain text to dynamically updating (not to mention pretty) pie charts and graphs of all shapes and sizes. I’m sure you could even come up with some ingenious overall comment tracking, even down to “common topics” stats, author stats and linked URLs.
Sure all of what I’ve said thus far could be done in the client-side plugin, but a centralized resource for all this information across all of your blogs would be, I think, very welcome. Besides, if it were all done on the Akismet server, comparisons could be made to the global blogging community. They could give you various indications of how well your comments stack up against the rest of the world in signal-to-noise ratio.
What do you think, Matt? Anything like this in planning already, or am I totally off in left field?
When this first popped up in my reader, I read the title as “What I’d like to see from Christmas Next”.
Man I need some sleep!
Well this will be the last time I check your blog before Christmas, so I just wanted to say thanks for the entertaining and (sometimes
) educational read. Hope you have a great Christmas.
Cheers.
What I’d like to See from Christmas Next? No way… That list would be at least 3 times longer than this post was!
Thanks a lot, I’m glad I can keep you entertained, and I’ll try not to educate too much in ‘06 - it makes my head hurt too.
I hope you (and everyone else) have a very Merry Christmas as well, and I’ll see you guys back here to compare all our new toys!