Akismet (FREE)

GitLab uses Akismet to prevent the creation of spam issues on public projects. Issues created through the web UI or the API can be submitted to Akismet for review.

Detected spam is rejected, and an entry is added in the Spam Log section of the Admin page.

Privacy note: GitLab submits the user's IP and user agent to Akismet.

NOTE: In GitLab 8.11 and later, all issues are submitted to Akismet. In earlier GitLab versions, this only applied to API and non-project members.

Akismet configuration is available to users on self-managed GitLab. Akismet is already enabled on GitLab SaaS (GitLab.com), where it's configuration and management are handled by GitLab Inc.

Configuration (FREE SELF)

To use Akismet:

1. Go to the Akismet sign-in page.
2. Sign in or create a new account.
3. Click Show to reveal the API key, and copy the API key's value.
4. Sign in to GitLab as an administrator.
5. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
6. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Reporting (/admin/application_settings/reporting).
7. Select the Enable Akismet checkbox.
8. Fill in the API key from step 3.
9. Save the configuration.

Training (FREE SELF)

To better differentiate between spam and ham, you can train the Akismet filter whenever there is a false positive or false negative.

When an entry is recognized as spam, it is rejected and added to the Spam Logs. From here you can review if entries are really spam. If one of them is not really spam, you can use the Submit as ham button to tell Akismet that it falsely recognized an entry as spam.

If an entry that is actually spam was not recognized as such, you can also submit this information to Akismet. The Submit as spam button is only displayed to administrator users.

Training Akismet helps it to recognize spam more accurately in the future.