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Quick question about spammed comments

D

dugweb

Diamond Member
what are the things called that you have to type in when you register online for something, that are designed to prevent bots from registering or posting. usually a random looking assortment of letters and numbers.


Also, if anyone has any advice on how one would be implemented to a website it would be greatly appreciated. My comments are being overrun with spam 🙁
 
I hate captchas. They're almost as annoying as spam, speaking as someone who has trouble reading them correctly a good percentage of the time. Anyone who was more visually impaired / dyslexic / ESL / ADD might have great difficulty with them, and I don't think the "audio" versions are a catch-all route to "accessible" design (though it is a nice thought/provision) since it is assuming a lot that someone's audio output will actually exist / be functional / be heard. Out of ~ 10 systems I operate, MAYBE one will have audio output hooked up.
And of those ~ 10 it isn't so uncommon that at least some will have fonts or resolutions set so that even normal web fonts or images are on the "small side" of readability even when they're not intentionally distorted.

I think the OCR BOTs can often read captchas better than I can, and I usually do pass the Turing test.
 
Capcha is the enemy. I'd rather read 10 spam posts than have to deal with a single fucking capcha. They're possibly the worst anti-spam measure ever taken as far as user friendliness goes.

* I make an exception for simple Capchas that are EASY TO READ. This may still let a small percentage of the spam through but not much.
 
Captchas are almost completely defeated. At this point their utility is at the tail end of it's lifecycle.
 
hmm, i guess i wasn't aware of how universally hated they are. are there more user accessable methods of fighting spam ? or what other methods are good for not getting too many spam posts, besides just moderation?
 
nah, this is anandtech, where everyone hates everything.

One other option is to ask questions that robots won't know how to answer.

It can be as simple as something like "Is iced coffee hot or cold" and only process the form if someone answers "cold" (bots don't have knowledge!)
 
Originally posted by: dugweb
hmm, i guess i wasn't aware of how universally hated they are. are there more user accessable methods of fighting spam ? or what other methods are good for not getting too many spam posts, besides just moderation?
Click to expand...

What's important to realize is that people normally don't say anything about anything unless they dislike it. That's why there are many more negative posts than positive posts. Internet forums are for people who like to complain and content people usually don't have a reason to complain.
 
Originally posted by: dugweb
hmm, i guess i wasn't aware of how universally hated they are. are there more user accessable methods of fighting spam ? or what other methods are good for not getting too many spam posts, besides just moderation?
Click to expand...

I think moderation is the only really reliable choice at the moment. If you want the site to run on auto, then a CAPTCHA will still cut the spam way back. But like I said, their utility is at the tail end. If you run a site with lots of hits then eventually someone will take the time to run a CAPTCHA breaker on it, and they'll get an account.
 
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