Capatcha

[Random Fella]

Why does it have to be so confusing? I'm sure normal letter would work.

Okay it does stop double post but still...

 

[Snotnarok]

I rarely saw spam here to begin with, and I can't imagine this doing that much considering most spambots come on, put out a post to everyone they can in one go or just make 1 topic and then that's it they're gone.

 

[Cogwheel]

I hate it with a passion.
When did THIS site have any form of spam ever?
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/image?c=03AHJ_Vuv3MbqWElVLOZgtnSpjaE_0PV9WzLeh2X7owv6UTBDh8TUCRTMAquYuQbxQteWEvSeEqHUIAfvkgiO8V1KJdt7o8WMe-Tqek2ntuw9jh-evVnyzOv2XHtvjuBya70-_8jZ7mZ4krmIHAt9janU2UH9hxzV2-w
that first word looks Arabic.

Hebrew, actually.

-symmetry illits being the captcha for this post. Negative symmetry? Symmetry is evil? Is that you, doctor Steinman?

 

[Kunzer]

I can't believe people are complaining that Capatcha is unreadable. Seriously, how can you not decipher this?

Elpsheir finish-line. Not that difficult.

I'm just waiting for the captcha to give a middle finger.

LOL. yeah, Captcha are retarded. the Escapist was far better until that crap came along

 

[Bon_Clay]

You do know you can just ignore the nonsense characters right? Pretend they aren't there and type the real word and it will work.

The system is only one of the two words is ever legit and needs to be typed. It'll always be the same font style and isn't a real word. Properly spelled English words, stuff that isn't as bold as the normal letters, and things that aren't number or letters are the unimportant word.

So one of the two words it doesn't even verify the spelling of. And I'm pretty sure it gives you a one letter error pass on the real word too. With a bit of practice you can easily identify which words you need to type and answer them all correctly very quickly.

If you had to type the captcha in every time you posted then yes a system like that would be a good idea. But as it is I think its easy enough to ignore.

 

[FalloutJack]

capatcha be everywhere. it's to make life better. you can either look at a captcha every now and then or look at tons of spam. deal with it.

This is the only place I often - if ever - see capatchas and it did not have large amounts of spam prior to this. Of course, the mods say that they personally killed a slew of bots and such, but basically this is the only message board I've ever been on that has this arrangement, so I don't know what to say to it all.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

No kidding, I don't know how many times I've gotten some indecipherable scribble and had to refresh it a bunch of times till I got something I could actually read.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

I hate it with a passion.
When did THIS site have any form of spam ever?
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/api/image?c=03AHJ_Vuv3MbqWElVLOZgtnSpjaE_0PV9WzLeh2X7owv6UTBDh8TUCRTMAquYuQbxQteWEvSeEqHUIAfvkgiO8V1KJdt7o8WMe-Tqek2ntuw9jh-evVnyzOv2XHtvjuBya70-_8jZ7mZ4krmIHAt9janU2UH9hxzV2-w
that first word looks Arabic.

First word is hebrew. And to post this I need to retype "and arganda".

 

[Whitenail]

It's a minor inconvenience (and preferably I'd rather not do it) but I don't mind, my days on Funnyjunk have taught me that captchas can make hilarious comics (props to the guy who posted the inglip comic).

 

[-Drifter-]

if it helps cut down on spam on message boards, I'm all for anything like that.
it takes 5 extra seconds to post.

capatcha be everywhere. it's to make life better. you can either look at a captcha every now and then or look at tons of spam. deal with it.

oicat total

There's barely any spam posts here, and what's there gets through anyway.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.265005-How-to-get-free-games-and-stuff-virus-free-AND-the-creators-still-get-their-money

And I usually wind up having to refresh my captcha at least 5 times before I get anything readable. It may not be a big deal, but it still seems like an unnecessary waste of time for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

You do know you can just ignore the nonsense characters right? Pretend they aren't there and type the real word and it will work.

The system is only one of the two words is ever legit and needs to be typed. It'll always be the same font style and isn't a real word. Properly spelled English words, stuff that isn't as bold as the normal letters, and things that aren't number or letters are the unimportant word.

So one of the two words it doesn't even verify the spelling of. And I'm pretty sure it gives you a one letter error pass on the real word too.

If you had to type the captcha in every time you posted then yes a system like that would be a good idea. But as it is I think its easy enough to ignore.

Incidentally, some captcha's are designed that the second word is an actual printed word from a damaged or distorted text, one that is being restored. Since computers can't read the writing to determine what the original word was, people need to determine it manually. Someone eventually had the idea to scan the offending words and insert them into captchas, to reduce the workload and expense of painstakingly editting old pages.

I like to think that in some small way, this is helping to preserve literature, so I don't mind that much.

P.S. My captcha was "Heritage" and "theold". What are the odds?

 

[Jordi]

onecusta nr&st

I just had to type that to post this thread. I'm sure many of you reading this had to type some similar gibberish to reply to another thread earlier today. Now, I have nothing against spam-protection, but isn't it a little odd that people who have high post counts and have been registered for months, even years, get a spambot check every once in a while? If it's not too inconvenient, I believe a system should be set up where, once a user reaches a certain post count and, say, two weeks registration time, they should no longer have to suffer having to type indecipherable nonsense.

I think the reason some are fairly indecipherable is that reCAPTCHA is supposed to give you one word that an optical character recognition (OCR) program can recognize and one that it can not. The idea is that your input is only checked on the known word, and they use your input for the unknown word to decipher the text that it came from.

This relies on the used OCR's ability to identify whether it was able to read something or not. The word that it cannot read can basically be anything, including non-words. For this word, it also doesn't matter what you fill in, as far as the captcha goes. However, sometimes an OCR will think it was able to decipher a word, when it was really not able to. In this case you are basically screwed.

What I really don't understand is why we have captcha's here at all. We don't even need to look at someone's postcount and/or how long they have been a member. We can just look at who managed to get an account and log in. Put the captcha at the registration process. Maybe use a captcha when logging in. Do we really get spam from "good" accounts? Was it explained somewhere why The Escapist felt the need for this?

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I now know that it's impossible to sneeze while laughing your ass off.

.........

Thanks!

(Ironic that I had to do the Captcha thing, too - field atechade. Wonder if that's a new weapon from the Drake series...)

I don't mind about Captcha, really. It annoys me, though, when something comes up and I start to wonder if someone laced my joint. Also, if Captcha, somehow, manages to moon someone, I'll complain. But only a little.

 

[tunderball]

I am King of the Lurkers I hardly ever post unless I feel that I have something important to contribute and I have to fill out a Capatcha to make sure I'm not spamming? Ok fair enough but you could at least make them readable, or in one set language like English? my skills in typing ancient Hebrew are not what they once were.

 

[Death God]

They aren't all that bad but they are funny. I got one that said, "Goat hell-raiser", and I thought it was hilarious myself.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I can see why some other sites may want to use it, but the Escapist?
Before they introduced the capatcha system here, I barely saw any span at all on these forums...

 

[Ghengis John]

I just got my all time high. It was scientific notation and I didn't even get a screen shot. I just got sorta mad and clicked the refresh button. Now I'll never now if I could figure out how to type N to the power of of equal sign, 7 , over e o ne.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

I understand that if the site needs them to reduce spam, then it's for the better I suppose, although you can count me as one of the others who have not seen spam. My major gripe would be that some are too hard to read for even a human and I often think that the premise of recaptcha is a crock: "Stop Spam, Read Books!" Bullspit.

"Purple flibritbit" is NOT reading "books," it's re-typing one word and some gibberish. I don't care if I'm helping some deciphering project or not, just don't insult my intelligence by saying that I'm reading anything. I'm deciphering. Why not tell me that reading the Men's Room sign is equivalent to reading The Lord of the Rings while we're at it?

 

[Artina89]

Meh, I can't really say captcha bothers me that much. I use it to reread my post and make sure it makes sense etc. If I can't read one of the words, then I just type in one of the words it gives me and it usually lets the post go through.

 

[Katoran]

Meh, you're helping to digitize old books, so consider it your good deed for the day or something.
Not to mention, Captchas actually get people jobs, in China and such; people hired (at terrible rates, but better than none) to fill them in all day for spam bots and such, iirc.