What is the point of Word Verification on Blogger?
It just drives me insane. Especially when, like me, you are capable of inputting the wrong thing 3 or 4 times in a row.
What is its purpose? I can't think it has one other than to irritate the fuck out of you?
Does it enable you to do some wicked clever thing re tracing who posted what comments? I hope so, because otherwise I cannot see the point of it at all. It's just like this little obstacle that's there for the hell of it.
And those of you who have chosen to have it on your blogs (you shall remain nameless, although Big Up to Meriam and Ramblings for NOT having it) I can assure you that no Undesirables have bothered to leave comments on my blog despite the lack of the Word Verification Guard-dog.
There's only one thing worse than word verification, and it's those blogs that require you to fill in like a whole fucking questionnaire when you leave a comment. Not so bad if they remember you when you go back. Really irritating when they don't.*Deep breath*
Ok - now I just know that someone is going to explain really easily why word verification is A Very Good Thing.
And just to ensure this isn't the most boring post ever: Duffy doing Warwick Avenue is going to be my last heartbreak vid:
Don't you just love her cute wee face?
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11 comments:
Me me me! I know this one!
But hang on--weren't you just calling someone else's rant "utterly charmless"? Pfffft to that.
Captchas were in Wired last year.
"A regular Captcha helps keep bots off of Web sites. ... If you get it right, you've proved you're a human ...
[The new ones are] taken from the Internet Archive's project to scan public-domain books. One word is known to the computer; the other couldn't be read by the Archive's scanners, so when you type it in you're doing a tiny bit of work for the project."
So you're helping the Internet Archive read books. That's sort of cool.
I find them less obtrusive lately--if I'm logged in to Blogger it doesn't ask for a Captcha, and the ones with real words aren't so bad. But you know what I really hate? Blogger doesn't provide a comments box on the same page as the post, and some people don't even use a pop-up. Horrors!
Rats. I knew this would happen.
Having said that, I don't actually understand the explanation and given that I am also struggling on a daily basis to prove I am even human, I think this is leading me to the conclusion that I am irredeemably thick.
Oh and RfP - the rant of Mr Coren was utterly charmless. MY rant is obviously of a different class. In fact, I think it could be rightly termed Enchanting.
The basic idea is: computers don't have eyes. or brains. Only humans can figure out squiggly pictures of letters. Ergo, you're only as thick as a computer. If we unplug it, you're smarter.
I dunno on the enchantingness. There's newspaper op-ed rants, and internet rants, and ritualized political rants in the middles of rock concerts.... The closest rant to "enchanting" that I've seen recently was this.
We use word verification at TMT. The reason is that we had no word verification and then we were hit by someone (or something) who/which posted multiple times on pretty much every single post in our archives. I had to go through every post and delete each spam comment by hand, which took a long time.
That sort of inconvenience was bad enough, but now that Blogger gives people the option to be emailed each new response to every thread they subscribe to, you can imagine how irritating it would be for them to suddenly receive a flood of spam via fake "comments" on those threads.
So, although word verification may also be irritating, it does protect everyone who chooses the "Email follow-up comments to" option when they leave a comment on our blog.
Wordpress has some of the best spam protection I've ever seen and it's automatic, no little squiggly combos to jot down.
I do get hung up on them sometimes, which leads me to believe I no longer have Superwoman eyes or else there's a serious disconnect between my brain and fingers. I don't mind the squiggly letters though; I know they're there to protect the blog.
At the same time, it is nice to have one less step on those that don't use 'em too.
Ok, ok. I am an arse. I admit it.
Ok, ok. I am an arse. I admit it.
Oh no you're not! Unless you really, really want to be the back end of a pantomime horse?
It's just that the spammers always seem to be behind (and sometimes in front of) you, and we can boo and hiss all we like, but they won't go away.
Sorry, I'm stretching that pantomime metaphor far too far and I think it burst almost immediately, leaving me with a plateful of metaphorical foam cake all over my face.
Can it be a coincidence that on Manlove Monday Tumperkin decided she's an arse?
Oh, er. Apparently I'm the arse.
I can see how word verification would be a good thing for really popular blogs that turn up at the top of the search engines because they're more likely to attract spammers and bots.
But for the small-timers that don't have many readers and/or aren't listed on the search engines, I don't see the need.
I turned off the captcha feature on my own blog and I haven't had any spammers yet. If I ever do get a spam comment, no biggie. I'll just delete it.
I love Warwick Avenue, but had not seen the video yet. Now I am in tears. thank you.
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