It's a little like playing Whack-a-Mole, but we do use the moderation rules to keep spammers in check.

Whack a mole is right! Too bad there's no scoring system...might make it more fun.

Silly question - but if Akismet is free for personal use, why is it to be a paid add-on?

Morgan- It will be a paid option because we will be tightly integrating it with Hoop.la's existing content moderation system, including options to send spam-detected posts to the Hoop.la moderation queue, delete automatically, and delete and ban users automatically. We will also have a "restore" queue for deleted spam.

Okay got it - so it's Akismet spam control on crack. Thanks for the explanation!

Yes, that is the technical description.