Why we introduced CAPTCHA
Mikey 27 comments
If you've commented within the last day you've no doubt seen a small change. Let me fill you in with a quick history.
Back in the early days of this site when we first started getting hit by comment spam, I vowed to not implement one of those barely decipherable drunken alpha-numeric sequences, or as they are technically called - CAPTCHA.
We all know how annoying they are, so that led us to develop our own solution in the form of a honey pot. The honey pot served us well for a couple of years stopping around 99% of comment spam, but as this blog became more popular over time spam-bots have also gotten smarter, and our little solution is no longer viable.
So now we have implemented our own CAPTCHA, but as you've probably noticed it's not as offensive like a typical CAPTCHA as mentioned earlier, and I've already received an email from one member thanking me for making it easy.
It works on the simple fact that spam-bots do not possess the intelligence (software) to recognise complex images such as a photo, so when presented with a picture of Spock for example, they will populate the field with random gibberish as they always do and be denied the comment.
There is one downside to this though and I did wrestle over it in the first instance. And that is this system is useless to people with visual disabilities. As far as I know we do not have blind people coming to the site, so I went ahead with this CAPTCHA anyway.
You will also notice that registered members are also presented with the CAPTCHA. My decision to do this was based on the simple premise that there is nothing stopping a spammer from registering an account and setting up a script to automatically spam the site, but as long as the CAPTCHA is in place, he won't succeed.
Your comments are welcome :-)
Jim
Wednesday 10th December 2008 | 10:04 PMI like it, but what about spelling and punctuation? I guess I'll figure it out in a minute.
I dig it.
This is 1,000,000 times better then the drunken writing. Nice job.
This is an excellent feature, I definitely enjoy the, "Oh no! You failed to prove you are human. Please try again." if you fail to answer the question.
Man I don't know. You're heavily banking on the idea that people are well versed in American (or Western) pop culture. You've effectively cut off certain parts of the world from ever being able to post. Not to mention people who can't spell very well, people who can't remember names, ambiguity (right now my picture is of Elvis, of course I know to put Elvis, but what if someone knew him by a nickname or by his real name, etc. [there are better examples than Elvis for this])
Also, if a bot really wanted to get in the site bad enough it could just cache the images, have a human provide the correct answer, and then the next time that image is encountered it puts in the right word.
...in response to this comment by Foxdie. That was a consideration, which is why I chose the ones I did. These pop-culture icons are known by both past and current generations.
As for spelling, I have taken that into account ass well. Elvis for example is one of them, but it will also accept 'the king', elvis presely' etc. And if you get it wrong anyway you have unlimited chances to get it right while different icons are presented.
I see where you are coming from though, and there is a chance that someone in the far east corner of Nicaragua won't know who Homer is, but doing my research the icons I have chosen are allegedly among the most popular in history and have the greatest world wide 'reach'.
"if a bot really wanted to get in the site bad enough it could just cache the images, have a human provide the correct answer"
That's a possibility but an unlikely one though I accept it might happen. I will of course know if that happens. And I can change any of the icons at any time.
I will watch with interest of course. I am not calling it the ultimate solution, but I think it's step in the right direction to being a less annoying captcha.
Kudos for your raising your concerns all the same.
...in response to this comment by Jim. It's not case sensitive and there is a 'help' link which says to just use the first name of the character. That said, you can still type in the full name and it will work.
Wendy W
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 07:08 AMIt's easy and cute and the best one of these I've seen. Who doesn't know homer simpson?
Gong
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 01:11 PMits good
but maybe a user can monitor the site and see what images are being cycled, then write a script to fill the field randomly. the picture will change randomly after each failure but eventually the bot will succeed correct?
unless there is a maximum number of tried
i'm no programmer though
I know I am always saying silly things, but I can honestly tell you that I have known only one of persons I have had to identify so far.
After 2001 (the movie), and I discovered that the Star Wars movies all had sound in space, I decided that I would never see any of them. And I guess I am the only one in the world who has not. I did know who Shrek was, but not because I went to the movies. What happened to what color is the sky, and some other-what I thought were well thought out-questions. Perhaps my comment is meaningless, the concept is fantastic, I consider myself a movie buff, but to be honest, I have not seen one of the movies I am being questioned about.
I may be odd, but stupid I hope not. I'm not sure that these movie "icons" are as well known as many think. One mans icon may represent another mans...well something else.
Love ya' tho' M.O. just would have picked a different theme.
F
Gong
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 04:00 PMwhy cant we de-kudos a comment?
...in response to this comment by Gong. Howdy Gong,
The spambot will still need to know what it is it's 'looking' at. It can keep entering random words into the field but the odds of it stumbling across the exact ones are about a billion to 1.
To answer your other question, I considered 'de-kudos' at the beginning but soon realised it would be open to abuse. As an example, someone might be inclined to take kudos away from another user for simply having an opinion he didn't agree with, even the comment itself might have been perfectly fine and valid.
So I've only allowed kudos, with the premise you can only be rewarded for good comments. Bad comment just don't get you anywhere.
Kudos for the good question though :-)
...in response to this comment by Friendo. Hey mate,
"What colour" questions might make it difficult for colour blind users, of which I am certain we have more than we have blind users. Though things like the colour of the sky and the colour of grass are probably considered general knowledge and even a blind person would have that knowledge, I don't know how many other 'what colour' questions we could have where it starts to become too difficult for them.
Plus I wanted something visual for the lazy and fun. Our regular users will soon come to learn that all the questions on the captcha on this site are the same, and they will know all they need to do is identify the character.
It's not perfect and I have some more ideas, but I will see how this one pans out. Keep your ideas coming though. You never know when you might hit something.
The Computer Whisperer
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 04:32 PMLOL! Love It
Anders
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 06:32 PMI for one would not have even thought about could blind people having difficulty with a colour based capcha or even a blind person using the internet for that matter. It makes me wonder what else I don't know about your job :-) I don't find it annoying at all for your information. Nice job and theres been no spam for a while I noticed.
Rodney
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 10:59 PM...in response to this comment by Friendo. Let me get this straight...
You won't watch star wars because the science isn't real enough... but you like 2001 a space odyssey... which has totally fictitious concepts of robotics, AI and gravity (to mention but a few). I recall many the scene set in "zero g" in that film where people are eating off plates.
:-P
SReaver
Thursday 11th December 2008 | 11:54 PMCorrect me if I'm wrong, but this implementation seems flawed. Each image is associated with a static number, this will allow a spam bot to build a list of numbers and words to get past this measure. Since there are only five images, it will be relatively easy. To counter this, you must randomise the name of the file every time it is called and use sessions to keep track of which image the user is viewing. However, I guess this is just an extra measure on top of the honey pot mechanism.
Rodney my man...
It's not so much that the science isn't accurate enough...Its indeed almost impossible to watch any Sci-Fi movie without a pretty good helping of suspension of disbelief.
In the case of Star Wars, and so many other movies today, explosions-both on earth, and in outer space, explosions are provided for some sort of: Oh how cool! reaction from the viewer.
I dont know about you-I know you are much younger than I-but how many times am I supposed to be impressed by an explosion? How many times am I supposed to think its cool to watch a person light the fuse that will set off a huge explosion, casually walk away as it goes off without even looking back?
Perhaps there is something wrong with me, but movies that depend on huge explosions, plenty of fancy guns, babes that are just too hot to be true, and fast fancy cars just dont do it for me.
To dare to stray quite far from the thread here, it should be mentioned that the works of author Arthur C. Clarke-co creator of 2001-blend dread and wonder as they examine the search for meaning in the universe and as they champion the idea that humanity's future lies far beyond Earth. Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0812433.html
Though this sort of thing may not make sense to you, but for me, it makes damn good Science Fiction. The sort of stuff I just dont see in westerns turned into Sci-Fi films like Star Wars.
I will give you however; I have seen some good Sci-Fi (which though incredibly inaccurate) have pretty good stories. Battlestar Gallactica, and Gattica (the film) to name a couple. I also thought the original 1884 Frank Herbert/David Lynch version of Dune was quite good.
I was pretty excited as I entered the theatre to see the original 1977 (iMDB rated #12 out of the top 250) Star Wars, and left truly disappointed, and have not seen another, nor any of its obvious Hollywood marketing spin offs since.
But the real issue is not the movies here, as none of us will agree on everything.
I did not see Sherk, dont ever eat at McDonalds-or whoever was in on the co marketing scheme on that one. I knew who he was, but could not spell his name. As I readily admit to my students: spelling is not one of my fortes.
I did now know, without help, who the guy with the long flashlight was, even though I saw the movie 30 years ago.
Totally fictitious concepts of robotics, AI were looking pretty good back in 1968 when 2001 came out. That word fictitious does come from the same root word as fiction right?
Lastly, youve got me quite curious now. If possible, could you please let me know where this eating off plates in zero G takes place in 2001 S.O. While it is highly unlikely I will change my view about the movie, and youve got me wondering here, who missed what?
I too have seen a noticeable reduction in spam, and think this new system is ultra cool. I merely suggest a tweak.
As I understand it, you have done much to help make our page look as good as it does. Keep up the good work.
F-
SacDuck
Friday 12th December 2008 | 02:29 AMRemember sound in space is in a different dimension than sound in earth.
Hey if you ever run out of celebrity faces how about trying celebrity genitals!
...in response to this comment by SReaver. Yes each image has a static number, but a spam bot alone can't get passed it because it still needs to know the word associated with the number. The only way it can beat the system is if someone manually examines the images and names associated with them and then writes/changes their scripts to target this specific site. Although I've often mentioned the 'phenomena' of spammers going to the effort of targeting this site and others manually, I've yet to come across any evidence of them having actually done so. The whole concept of spam-bots is that they are an automated system.
In any event, if by some miracle they go to that length, we can easily change our code so that the image file names are random.
FYI before this implementation we were deleting 30 - 100 spam comments per day. No we don't get any at all. Success so far, but thanks for the input. I will bear than in mind.
Gong
Friday 12th December 2008 | 09:40 AM...in response to this comment by Mikey. thanks for enlightening me
All good for me. A great solution. http://theletter.co.uk/ also has a similar captcha, they just ask a simple question (is water wet or dry), and you input 'wet'.
Kim OJ
Saturday 13th December 2008 | 10:12 AMI never really watched Startrek, so I could not identify Spock from the image. This cultural inhibitor factor could be further reduced by showing 2 or 3 images and ask: "Which is the funnies, smartest, sexiest, or most famous character?" and have any of them be an acceptable answer. Then if you do not know one of the characters you would just write in the other.
...in response to this comment by Kim OJ. Cheers Kim. I will look into a reload option, where if you don't recognise the character you can reload to see another. I will add several more as well and try to cover some outside of western tv/cinema. Ii would be happy to work with you on some suggestions there.
BadCam
Sunday 14th December 2008 | 05:32 PMHave you considered Akismet? It's a wordpress plugin though, so I'm not sure if you'd be able to use it, but d^mn it's good.
...in response to this comment by BadCam. Thanks for the tip BadCam. I've never been impressed with Wordpress so we made our own CMS. Though it's good for some blogs (and great that's its free and easy to set up) it falls way short of our requirements.
Rodney
Wednesday 10th December 2008 | 08:52 PMI used to be against captcha but now I see you found a way to incorporate Luke Skywalker, so I'm all for it!