"spam" comments are kept forever, could hugely bloat the database

[MC_incubus]

Although I'm all for keeping spam comments in the database so that plugins can use them for some sort of ham/spam analysis, the comments table could get massively bloated eventually. I know WordPress installs that put hundreds of spam comments away a day. In a year, they could have close to 100,000 spams in there! There really needs to be a limit. Perhaps it could be trimmed to X (dropping the oldest spams) every time a blog entry is published.

Chris J. Davis' Spam Nuker handles this very well.

 http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2005/03/05/spam-nuker-151/

Should we ask Chris if we can fold this into core, or should this remain the domain of a plugin?

The code for putting comments into 'spam' is in the core, so there should probably be code to flush it out. I'm loathe to add an option for this, but I can't help but think that the spam plugins could be put to good use by some sort of bayesian filter... you need a good collection of ham/spam for that. The other option is integrating this plugin, which allows viewing and deletion of "spam" comments as well as adding really cool paging. Essential plugin for me, I think everyone could benefit from it.

 http://www.coldforged.org/paged-comment-editing-plugin/

Okay, I definitely hit the wrong button there. I was thinking A = <a href=></a>... silly me:

 http://www.coldforged.org/paged-comment-editing-plugin/