Kross said:
The captchas are due to spam bots being manually registered and then later turned loose on the forums. Many people had issues with the legibility of recaptcha, so we started trying a more legible captcha system that also helps pay to run the forums. It happens approximately after your second and twentieth post of the day, and does not happen to pubclub users as very few spambots pay for accounts.
I understand the purpose of having a capcha system, and don't begrudge one being in place. But when you used
SolveMedia service, for a while at least, we had to watch a noisy fifteen-second commercial (often the same one over and over again), which became unbearably annoying. Giving you guys the benefit of the doubt, I assumed
no human being who actually uses the Escapist site implemented this policy.[footnote]I was basing it on the way that Activision's
persistent online connection DRM was approved entirely
by people who never touch computer games, and was used to promote sales of market shares,
to people who generally don't touch computer games. Perhaps it is cynical of me to expect at the top of
The Escapist is yet another a board of directors full of old men in a smoke filled room who joke about how much we squares will pay or endure to get our sweet, sweet gaming fix.[/footnote] I was merely pre-empting the possibility (which then seemed immanent) that the unbearable commercials were going to return.
I'm sorry it is inconvenient, but adding it to every post is not on topic to most discussions and will not change their implementation.
Ah, but it did get your attention, did it not?
It is true, and I do have a terrible habit of posting tangentials as footnotes in my text, often because
I think they're interesting, even if they're not on topic. I figured footnoting it as a disclaimer to my fellow
Escapists as a footnote to my sig would be reasonably inoffensive.
If you have suggestions for alternate captcha systems or techniques, please let us know in the Tech Team group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Tech-Team].
Sadly I don't, not being in the market for capcha services and having no idea regarding the technical particulars of any given one. I assumed the ones that perfectly differentiated man from machine were too difficult to implement at the embedding level, or something like that, which is why you returned to the service that sometimes gives false negatives, requiring a successful confirmation but not providing the embedded window. I reported these events. Lately, there haven't been problems so I presume them solved, but I am still wary that you may decide to run the commercials again.
Personally, I've never had problems with the one used by
The Escapist before
SolveMedia, so I can only assume that it was others who were having problems.
238U.[footnote]In the event that Escapist requires me to view a commercial before getting a code, I will simply not post. Depending on the frequency, this may temper or cease my future participation in the Escapist community. Apologies in advance, if this policy prevents me from replying to you when it is proper to do so.[/footnote]
PS: I have dreams of someday joining the PubClub. Sadly, in my current impoverished state of affairs, it is not today.
PPS: I was wrong. It didn't accept my capcha and then sent me to a fixit page where it demanded one but provided no window by which to do so. And then going back, the
post button was greyed out.
