I updated WordPress to the most recent version and activated the Askimet plugin and since then, there’s been no comment spam problem on either one. One of them does have a message on the Dashboard page that says: Akismet has protected your site from 1,683 spam comments.
Now I just need to go look at my old, idle blogs to see how much comment spam is there. I don’t want to delete them as there is still some good content to retrieve.
A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011