Hi Aaron,
Yes, I think we need to hope that webmentions get added in to WordPress. As the indieweb (webmentiosn, microformats) stuff seems to be getting adopted by the W3C I guess this will become more likely?

I think whitlisting webmentions will only be necessary until they become more frequent and Akismit understands them?

My comments, coming via Jetpack, is a mystery to me. I thought webmentions should be sent automatically. As you say, "really not sure". I'll try filling in the webmention field on your posts next time.

I guess my approach to the indieweb is, "this is the way things should work", I hope it gets easier.

As to finding this post, my front page only shows Article format posts, likes, status, photos ect all end up on the http://johnjohnston.info/blog/type/status/ page. I am still thinking & rethinking about how my blog should be organised...