yes. that's why I told you to give the column a default value.
As for Akismet... that one is know to cause a while bunch of issues and is basically pointless unless you allow guests to post. If you require users to register in order to post, then just stop the spammers before they complete registration. I have not had a single spammer successfully register in 3 years now on one site.... and we only had 2 real, person spammers in that same three years on another site. Not a single bot, anywhere.