I've 'been here' only a few times - but already had some trouble with those 'Verification letters'!: Occasionally, a 'G' may look like a 'C' - or a 'V' may be mistaken for a 'Y' {even in this editing window the 'Vee' and the 'whY' look almost identical! ;)}
The 'audio broadcast' doesn't seem too helpful, either: I takes quite some time loading - an normally (at least) one of the letters seems to become 'swallowed'!?
Any room for improved user friendliness here? 8)
Unfortunately it's as complex as it is due to spam issues - even with that verification on the first ten posts, there's still plenty of issues with respect to spam getting through :(
Point taken - what worries me more are the problems my (potential) users may encounter, if (ever) I succeed in 'fielding' my personal forum! :P
PS: Also this comment was 'declined' (twice): "The letters you typed don't match the letters that were shown in the picture" :D
It's not available in the 1.1 branch, it's only in the 2.0 branch of SMF and it's configurable - you can disable it or change the number of posts required. On the forum I seem to spend most of my time at the moment (SimpleDesk) we have it set to 5 posts.
I actually installed the reCAPTCHA mod to filter out spam bots during registration... and I don't bother with CAPTCHA on the posts...
since adding reCAPTCHA, the only spammers we have had have been the manual sort...
Maybe try this?
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2182