Releasing CAPTCHA & Holding My Breath
CAPTCHA is the Typepad feature that requires you to copy a string of six hard-to-read characters before you can post a comment. I have to do it on this blog even though I am the author. Most people find it annoying. I know I do. We use such things to stop robots from leaving nasty spam on our sites.
Last December, I told Michael Sippey, Six Apart's top Tyepad guy that I really wish that visitors could get something simpler to prove they were human, such as a simple arithmetic problem like Josh Hallett uses. I also think they should be able to eliminate challenges to the post authors as well and finally, I'd like people who leave comments the option of being notified when someone else joins the conversation.
While Typepad is getting a lot better, it has not done any of these three burning wishes from this user's list. So today, after flunking a test to post a comment on my own site, I have disabled CAPTCHA. I'll see how it goes. Hopefully I will be able to manage the little maggots when they come with their spray paints and graffitti, but if I cannot, I'll just have to reinstate the annoying defense feature.
Typepad's implementation of CAPTCHA is particularly bad; by putting the challenge on a separate page from comment composition, it makes it easy to miss it and lose comments. (I've often commented on a blog, clicked "submit," and then clicked over to another window or application to do something else... and then an hour later, find Typepad under another window waiting for me to complete the CAPTCA form. Bad, bad, bad.
Good luck & let us know how you do without it. I'd love to kill it over on our blog, but am of course concerned about spam.
Posted by: John | June 12, 2007 at 02:50 PM
PS - I got a CAPCHA challenge posting that comment, so it's still on.
Posted by: John | June 12, 2007 at 02:51 PM
You're right. I unchecked the box but it required me to use Captcha as well. Maybe I have to republish the site which is minor neck pain. Or Maybe Sippey will read this and make it all better.
Posted by: shel israel | June 12, 2007 at 10:35 PM
Most CAPTCHA is also horribly inaccessible to users with disabilties.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/captcha.php
I'm glad you're going to disable it.
Posted by: Justin Thorp | June 13, 2007 at 06:14 AM
Looks like we'll have to move you to PublicSquare, so can have your reader lend a hand managing comment spam and trolls...
Posted by: christina | June 13, 2007 at 09:30 AM