I decided to turn off comments on posts over 14 days old because one day I got 40 comments all SPAM! GRRRRRR 

I've been using WP-Spamfree which seems to block a lot of comments.

It also will tell you where a comment is from in your email notification and it gives you an option to blacklist their IP.

I like the feature of blacklisting the IPs.  I'll have to try that one.

@Suba – some sites I visit make me enter the 2 numbers every time (drives me nuts) – do you know why that would be?  I also used to use conditional captcha but it was always letters - I never did find the numbers one.

As others have mentioned, Akismet has probably marked you as spam. I was in the spam hell for quite some time, so were a lot of other bloggers

http://www.investitwisely.com/.....t-do-i-do/

I was among the list of "spammers". We tried everything to get out, but nothing worked. Finally I just changed the email I use for commenting (from my domain email to gmail) then it started working fine. Everyone used to have just Akismet, only after a lot of us started getting eaten by the spam hole, people started adding Conditional captcha. Now I don't mind the conditional captcha (I hate the recaptcha or whatever that is that shows those squiggly letters that I can never read), but I would be very annoyed if I had to enter it every time. In that case I would prefer the click.

@Suba – some sites I visit make me enter the 2 numbers every time (drives me nuts) – do you know why that would be?  I also used to use conditional captcha but it was always letters - I never did find the numbers one.

I use Akismet and conditional captcha as well. If you have to enter the numbers, it is because Akismet has classified you as spam. Conditional Captcha is really there to give the person leaving a comment a chance to tell Akismet that it's wrong.

I don't mind either system...but I do have having to enter a captcha code every time!

@Suba – some sites I visit make me enter the 2 numbers every time (drives me nuts) – do you know why that would be?  I also used to use conditional captcha but it was always letters - I never did find the numbers one.

That means Akismet has you marked as spam on those sites.  Am I one of them?  If so, I can ask Akismet to mark you properly.

@Crystal After i'm done with my comment and I move to using the mouse, I find it much easier to click a check box than to have to go back to the keyboard to enter more data.  I much prefer a single click every time than to have to enter 2 numbers every single time.

SPF, just to clarify, I don't think it is single click every single time vs 2 numbers every single time. It more like enter 2 numbers occasionally and most likely just once. I occasionally comment on Crystal's blog and I had to enter the numbers only once, I think it was the first time. After that I never had to enter anything so far.

I am not a frequent commenter (this is one area I have to totally improve on, I just read all the blogs but don't comment, I don't have enough confidence to comment. I have change that.) But from my little commenting, I feel something, a click or numbers (as long as I can read) is better than Akismet eating my comment without telling me anything.

It also will tell you where a comment is from in your email notification and it gives you an option to blacklist their IP.