I've been working a lot over the past few days and haven't had too much time to check out blogs. This morning I get on blogger and I see they have developed a new torture device. They've made their 'captcha' (for those who don't know which I was one of them, its the word verification) so incredibly difficult and longer that it makes leaving comments more difficult. In the end its going to frustrate people from commenting.
I'm not sure what the reason is for this change or what problem they addressing, but it's not a good solution. It says its there to prove you are no a robot. I don't know about you, but if a robot wants to post on my blog, I'm okay with that.
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I've noticed that too,
ReplyDeleteside note, just by the by...are you Sarah Connor?
I nuked my "captcha" a while ago figuring I'd just delete spam if I saw any... no harm yet. Hopefully more folks in the community follow suit.
ReplyDeleteThat new captcha is most irritating.
And yes, I have been known to dream of electric sheep.
Yeah, it's quite annoying. Apart from the fact that there are now two words, the second one is awfully hard to even read. So I'm not a big fan of the new captcha either.
ReplyDeleteWhat get's me is the punctuation: do you include it or not?
ReplyDeleteI haven't even seen the punctuation yet. My gosh. Are they trying to stop spam, or just annoy everyone enough to shut off their word verification?
ReplyDeleteYep, I've been having a real hard time reading the verification words lately...which proves that I'm a robot? I just watched Blade Runner again last weekend and, if Sean Young didn't know then maybe I don't either!
ReplyDeleteIf you think about it-roleplaying is one of the few hobbies in which robots can indulge freely. e.g. No one is going to play golf against a robot with their laser rangefinders and exactly repetitive swing, but RPGs sure-everyone else is pretending to be something else.
ReplyDeleteBTW I have included the punctuation and it works that way.
I have not used the human verification tools on my blog and I have had only one or two spam posts, which are easily deleted. I do not get more 3 or 4 comments usually so my traffic is not what your is, but I really am just annoyed the those things.
ReplyDeleteSome of my best friends are robots.
ReplyDeleteI don't like the new verification tools either.
Just switched mine off. Thanks
ReplyDeleteThe new captcha will be: "You're walking through the desert and you see a tortoise lying on its back..."
ReplyDeleteAlright, evidently I'm the only geek to recognize it: They are using ReCatchpa. One of the words is a normal catchpa. The other is from a scanned book that the computer can't recognize. They figure that if OCR software has trouble with it, then so will the software used to analyze these things. That is why some will have punctuation or untypable letters. Just type that half as best you can-- the computer doesn't know what it is. Then the word you type is sent back, and compared to what everyone else is typing for that word, and sent back to the library or whatever they get the words form.
ReplyDeleteThey've found it is so-so at stopping spam (About as good as any other Catchpa) but VERY good at OCRing books. So everytime you enter a catchpa you are helping preserve old library books.
I love robot jokes!
ReplyDeleteSince turning off my verification I've only gotten 5 comments from my SPAM NPC.
Ha! I just ranted about this very thing! But my rant was far more abusive than yours so i deleted it... I was trying to comment on a blogspot (?) post, which was so frustrating that I gave up... In fact it was so bad that I hit the 'play' key so I could hear it, but that was so garbled that it sounded more like a lost transmission from a dying star...
ReplyDeleteI'm going to give this one attempt, if not then I'll let these words disappear into the ether... which will be such a tragic loss for the future of humanity...
As Canageek said, it is for a good cause. Even so, I turned off word verification the last time Tim mentioned it here. I get a couple of spam messages a day but the filter has taken care of them all.
ReplyDeleteGoogle at its finest... the new captcha stuff sucks.
ReplyDeleteAre there Captcha mechanisms or anti-spam measures used in Google+?
I don't like them either. I still get spam, anyways, but from real people.
ReplyDeleteGoogle has a feedback forum for blogger, which is filling up with stuff about captchas. I recommend posting on it. If enough people do, they may revert to the old system.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/label?lid=1e8249fc90930d5e&hl=en
Psst...hey buddy! Wanna buy some Viagra?
ReplyDeleteSame here, Beedo. I haven not had to delete that much at all in the months since I blew away both the confirmation and the requirement to sign in, and people have had less problems leaving comments.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of with Matt on this, my traffic isn't that great, but if it suddenly drops off, so is this new capcha virus.
ReplyDeleteAnd, don't listen to Tom; buy my implants instead!
YOU ARE PRE-QUALIFIED FOR FINANCING!
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why they make it so GD complicated.. Put two words there.. and make them words not a random bunch of letters...
ReplyDeleteU
ReplyDeleteI know! I have to hit the refresh icon on that captcha about seven times before I can get to words I can actually read. I am about to turn mine off, I think...
ReplyDeleteI didn't even realize I had that word verification on, and it was the normal bit of a pain to find out where to turn it off.
ReplyDeleteThe first time I ran into this two word verification the one word was using greek letters. The other word seems always to be slanted with a smear of black/white negative font.
Thanks for bringing this up.
I see Tim dropped the verification. I'll be curious to see what others do.
ReplyDeleteYeah I dropped it on the 24th of January.
ReplyDeletehttp://gothridgemanor.blogspot.com/2012/01/word-verification-off.html
If no one noticed I can understand why. They lady in the chain mail bikini is very distracting.
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ReplyDeleteI'd turned my captcha off back in November. Haven't had a single bit of spam yet, but I'm also not a super-high traffic blog.
ReplyDeleteI find the new system readable (so far), but it is annoying. I support the idea of other bloggers turning it off too.
With an infinite number of bloggers and an infinite number of commenters, how long with the new captcha system will it take to duplicate the Complete Works of William Shakespeare?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the new word verification is irritating...plus, it doesn't seem to have stopped a rash of random spam-link comments from showing up on my blog in the last week!
ReplyDeleteAfter trying to use it several times, squinting, turning my head left and right and an enormous amount of profanity, I threw my rattle out the pram and posted about it too!
ReplyDeleteIt's terrible. It sometimes takes me 20 tries to get.
ReplyDelete