Friday 5 April 2013

Captcha - What the what?

So I'm debating whether to force my commenters into some type of anti-spam captcha or word verification thingy. Not that I'm deluged with spam like some say they are, but it's enough to annoy.

As you'll see, I still haven't done anything, mainly because I can't decide. Some have recommended Disqus (or however you spell it) but I quite often find that it's "having problems" when I'm trying to leave a comment. When that happens to me I end up clicking away so I don't want to encourage anyone to click away.

The most common one I come across is on Blogger and involves typing in a number followed by an illegible pile of letters. Honestly, are they trying to make it difficult? I came across one a few days ago and the letters were actually standing sideways to the viewer. While I was impressed with the graphics, the lettering was hardly conducive to leaving a comment.

I've just left a comment on a blog and it took me three attempts. Even the final, successful attempt looked like this:-


Bear in mind that this is about twice the size of the actual captcha image on the blog. I think I put in 6243, but seriously Blogger, what the what?

9 comments:

  1. I had to put in the Google word recognition and it's definitely stopped some people from commenting, however, my spam was out of this world, so I had really no choice.

    It's a pain.

    Hx

    ReplyDelete
  2. I seriously hate word captcha (it's evil) but usually, I will struggle with it until I make it through. What about moderation? Still a pain though - for you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I tried without it for a while, but was inundated with spam so put it back. It's a pain, I know, but it saves my having to delete a load of rubbish. Sometimes wonder if I'm a bit like King Canute trying to stop the waves: spam comments, spam e-mail, unsolicited post and phone calls......

    ReplyDelete
  4. I decided not to have people try to decipher the letters - the few comments I get have to wait until I approve them before they show up on my blog. Of course, I haven't blogged much recently so I I don't have many comments to moderate. The spam keeps pouring in though!
    You get far more comments than I do of course, so it may be more of a pain for you to moderate them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. So Jen Smith, who blogs at Strictly Guiding (dot blogspot.co.uk) advised me to go into Settings, the Posts and Comments, and change the "Who can comment?' to registered users, instead of just any old body. Have done that so we'll see that happens.
    Thanks Jen.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Captcha is a pain in the arse. Sometimes you can type in the wrong letters/numbers and it still goes through, then other times it takes 3 or more attempts and other times it won't work at all. When you've spent 5 minutes reading a post, 5 minutes writing your comment then another 5 minutes fannying about with captcha only to see the blogger has comment moderation on and you can't see what you've written anyway, it is very off putting and I imagine people just can't be arsed reading the blog anymore. Such a shame because the blog might be brilliantly written and the blogger might have gone to lots of trouble to write the post.

    CJ x

    ReplyDelete
  7. Am trying out comment moderation at the moment but it's a pain as there are loads of spam emails to delete, which is still annoying.

    Let me know how you get on with the registered users thing. I don't get that many genuine anonymous comments so that might be the way to go.

    ReplyDelete
  8. As someone who reads blogs but doesn't have one, I find the Captcha things quite difficult, as I often have trouble figuring out what the words are supposed to be. Some systems are clearer than others but I couldn't tell you which.

    As long as the damn thing works, I would go with having it though. It's better than that annoying spam.

    I have been know to give up though, when the stupid captcha thing hasn't allowed my word, even though I'm sure I typed it right.

    I don't mind having to register, as long as you don't mind me not having a blog and therefor having nothing to link to or anything. I haven't got a google account either.
    It's all a pain in the arse, isn't it?! (Or should that be ass?)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Try www.areyouahuman.com. Its a quick fun game instead of that distorded text junk. Its great!

    ReplyDelete

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