Captcha

[Drew Smith]

LOL

So along with frustratingly difficult photo upload protocols we now have to jump through some more hoops to comment in the Forum.

I think they should extend these systems and procedures to their real world hard copy of their Magazine:

1. Taking a copy of Digital Photography off the shelf in your local shop you stride confidently to the check out to pay for it, only to find that as you reach for your money the Mag has disappeared and reappeared back on the shelf??

2. You return to the shelf bemused and take the Magazine off the shelf again. Once more you stride (with slightly less confidence) back to the checkout to pay - but once again it disappears and reappears back on the shlef. You try three more times to get the Mag to the checkout but fail, at which point you ask for assistance in purchasing your Mag from a sales assistant.

3. You follow the Assistant's instructions to the letter but to no avail.

4. They get somebody else to tell you the same thing but in a different way.

5. Finally you succeed, but aren't sure why, the Magazine remain in your possession and you can now pay for it.

5. Only you now find that the money you offer is not accepted by this shop. You have the wrong kind of money.

6. You replace the Mag and go home to fetch the 'right' kind of money.

7. On your return the Magazine keeps disappearing at the check out again, even though you are following exactly the same procedure that worked last time.

8. After requesting assistance again you finally get the Magazine to the checkout once more where you offer the 'right' money.

9. It's accepted and you walk confidently out of the shop door only to find that your Magazine has disappeared and reapeared on the shelf once more! You took too long in making your purchase and your Session has 'timed out'!

10. You've had enough! You decide to go home, get your Camera and take the unprecedented step of going out and taking some photographs instead.

11. You smile to yourself as you rediscover the wonder and enjoyment of taking photographs instead of just talking about taking photographs on Internet Forums.

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by Reinardina

That would be much easier.

I always struggle with the 'Wobbly Words,' and blamed my poor eyesight. I'm glad to see, that so many of you have problems with them too!

It puts you off commenting though, especially if your 'screen time' is limited.

I find half a bottle of scotch make the words look normal!

[Lurkalot]

Capture is only any good against spambots, and even they are getting through these systems now. To be honest it's a waste of time..

Spam farms are growing big time now, and thousands of people are now employed to sign up and spam websites. They being human, can get through the capture.

Rather than inconvenience the members of this site, the capture should be done at registration, not afterwards.

Not sure what anti spam mods they have in place, but it would be handy if when registering they were checked against the stopforum spam or project honeypot databases first.

[Reinardina]

Originally Posted by OldBoy

I find half a bottle of scotch make the words look normal!

I'll try that! Thanks for the tip.

[hagz]

Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart

thats captcha it is designed to be difficult to read to stop Optical Character Recognition bots deciphering them. Whilst they are a right pain for members they do massively cut down on SPam for site owners. i have them on my sites.

but as lurkalot said they are not foolproof but they do cut down spam.

[Lurkalot]

Originally Posted by hagz

thats captcha it is designed to be difficult to read to stop Optical
but as lurkalot said they are not foolproof but they do cut down spam.

Thanks, and I agree. But my point was,

This should be done at the time of registration, and not afterwards when the spammers are logged in. This makes everyone else suffer by having to go through the capture process just to make a comment etc.

There is mods for Drupal / Vbulletin out there to do exactly this.

Bottom line. If they can't log in, they can't comment. And yes the odd few will get through, but so what they'll get deleted.

This bit got me though, to quote from the first post.

Originally Posted by Marcus Hawkins

Hello everyone

Just a quick post to let you know that we've had to switch CAPTCHA back on for commenting on the site, at least temporarily, due to a spammer...

Marcus

A spammer? Seriously? one spammer caused all this grief for the members.

[karenoliver]

Does anyone know what the spammer was posting and where? I never seen anything at all and I tend to check in quite a few times in the day and night.

Karen

[Lurkalot]

I suspect it was somewhere in the galleries, but I wouldn't know. I don't use the gallery.

And there doesn't seem to be a way of viewing the latest comments. This makes it impossible to moderate.

[karenoliver]

Originally Posted by Lurkalot

I suspect it was somewhere in the galleries, but I wouldn't know. I don't use the gallery.

And there doesn't seem to be a way of viewing the latest comments. This makes it impossible to moderate.

Oh that makes sense then. As for the comments it would be nice to get alerts when you recieve comments as at the moment you can't always tell.

Karen

[Amy Davies]

The spammer in question was posting a stream of comments on various articles and galleries. Once we switched the captcha back on, it seems to have stopped (or at least slowed down) for a while.

As for there not being a list of latest comments making it impossible to moderate, we have the ability to see the latest comments via drupal and are able to moderate accordingly.

Also, there is indeed a captcha box at registration, which obviously in this instance hadn't worked in preventing the spammer.

I'll let you know when it's been removed again - thanks for your patience with this.

Amy