Your anti-spam measurements are far too extreme here

[Ecru]

Just letting you know, every post I've made until now has taken me at least 10 tries to get the captcha right. It's extremely difficult to read and I had to request the same image over and over again until it finally clicked.

I can understand the difficulty setting as you really don't want bots, but I was ready to just stop posting after the fifth try.

Seems that 10 posts made it so I can post without the captcha, so that's nice. Perhaps make it 3 or 5 posts instead of 10?

[Deaks]

Thank you for posting, 10 posts was agreed as it shows user is active we have had people coming in posting 5 posts of spam but luckily the community is fast at reporting and staff are fast at responding so at this time I cannot see it being lowered but we are always listening to community.

[Irisado]

It's annoying to make it through your first ten posts here, I agree, but I don't think that it can be changed.  A few spammers still make it through the system here as it is without making life easier for them, so I have to say that I back the Staff at SMF leaving the limit unchanged.

Blame the spammers, for it is their actions that have forced this to be implemented in the first place.

[Colin]

I can't agree more. I even remember how difficult it was to guess the capatcha. You know it is bad when humans can't get it right after several attempts. Hopefully in the future there will be a more effective way to deal with bots. I apologize for the difficulty you encountered.

[MrPhil]

As CAPTCHAs have become less and less effective against bots (and more effective against humans!), other methods will have to come to be used. These could include visual puzzles such as clock faces, Q&A, poster behavior (e.g., a whole bunch of posts in a very short time), and post content (looking for spam characteristics such as keywords, capitalization, substitution of numbers and punctuation for letters, etc.).

[kingW3]

Quick idea
A post moderation for first 10 posts until the first 10 posts are approved the posts after 10 posts doesn't show(for example if you post 150 times and your first 10 posts aren't approved none will show),and if approving them is a much of job for the team members you could give it to community helpers with more than 100 posts(i took 10 and 100 posts as an example).Mostly you will find at least 10 team members or smf heroes/super heroes this shouldn't be a much of a problem.
Another one
Disable links in signature and posts for the first few posts completely so if a spam bot links to any link like www. or wwwdot or www(dot) etc it will give them a error You can't post link(s) until xx posts
Still SMF support should be excluded in both cases

[Kindred]

post moderation - no...   WAY too much work, even for community helpers.   Just won't work and will only get new users upset at how long it takes.

Signatures and links *ARE* already disabled for new users.


We can't use "questions" here either...   because we have far too many international/non-english speakers.


basically, there is no good answer...

[青山 素子]

We can't use "questions" here either...   because we have far too many international/non-english speakers.

That's the big problem with this forum. It caters to an international audience. This makes it difficult to simply implement something "friendlier" like question/answer sets as not every member knows a single common language. Fancy picture-based tests, like choosing all the dogs in a mixed set of photos, requires localized instructions for every language you want to support. Traditional CAPTCHA at least has the benefit of being mostly language-neutral. Even if you don't use the alphabet in your native language (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tawainese, etc.) you will at least have some way of typing the symbols.

[Ricky.]

But still Captcha is in English I guess..  ?

[青山 素子]

But still Captcha is in English I guess..  ?

It's scrambled letters from the Latin/Roman alphabet. Every language that uses those letters can understand the purpose, more or less. Even languages that do not use those letter forms will have some way to input them on a computer because they are used in programming languages and a lot of other software. It's as close as you can get to being language-neutral for a security measure like this.

[Ricky.]

Alright.. thats well explained !

[emanuele]

* emanuele takes a note about multi-language antispam Q&A...it shouldn't even be too difficult I think...they just need a new table, {db_prefix}log_comments is not the best place for that...

[euantorano]

Definitely agreed with the OP. I just signed up and I'll be lucky to make it to five posts thanks to the fact I have to fill in this captcha every single time I do try to post. I had to listen to the audio captcha to be able to make any kind of sense of the last one I got...

[floridaflatlander]

Definitely agreed with the OP. I just signed up and I'll be lucky to make it to five posts thanks to the fact I have to fill in this captcha every single time I do try to post...

It's worth it.

... I'll be lucky to make it to five posts thanks to the fact I have to fill in this captcha every single time I do try to post. I had to listen to the audio captcha to be able to make any kind of sense of the last one I got...

Press ctrl+ to help you read the letters better

ctrl0 to return to regular text.

[Colin]

I have better than 20/15 vision and I still had serious trouble transcribing those characters. It is by no means clear.

[floridaflatlander]

I have better than 20/15 vision and I still had serious trouble transcribing those characters. It is by no means clear.

Odd, mine are pretty bad and I can read them without enlarging them.

[青山 素子]

I have better than 20/15 vision and I still had serious trouble transcribing those characters. It is by no means clear.

Quality of vision isn't really a huge factor when you're looking at distorted letterforms as opposed to small/large stuff.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Cathpas are a pain in the butt to humans, yet seem to be easily read by bots.  So all they deter is the legitimate user, and not those they are supposed to deter.  The one on here, I recall is very hit and miss whether a person can correctly decipher it.

I can understand the difficulty of using verification questions on a multilingual site.  No doubt there are also other various antispam measures being employed by SMF behind the scenes, but when the antispam measure is deterring the legitimate user, some different defence has to be found.

[John Wodden]

I agree with you 

Just letting you know, every post I've made until now has taken me at least 10 tries to get the captcha right. It's extremely difficult to read and I had to request the same image over and over again until it finally clicked.

I can understand the difficulty setting as you really don't want bots, but I was ready to just stop posting after the fifth try.

Seems that 10 posts made it so I can post without the captcha, so that's nice. Perhaps make it 3 or 5 posts instead of 10?

I agree with you

[LiroyvH]

I'm sure *you* would...

[青山 素子]

I'm sure *you* would...

Well, (s)he is a "tool" based on the username.

[live627]

no

[Kindred]

Well, it uses the latin alphabet and arabic numerals....

but other than that, no Captcha is not in english specifically

[floridaflatlander]

As for this regular member, I much rather it be a small pain to someone new or with a few post and keep out as much crap as possible.
I would hope that they could look at the greater good and see it benefits them and all of us to keep that spam sh*t off of here.
How many members are here and how quickly are questions answered?
This forum is a great resource and I can only imagine how many spam attempts are made here and how tempting a target smf is.

[MrPhil]

It is a bit culturally biased. It uses the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals, so if you're not used to handling them, being able to recognize distorted forms might pose a problem for some people. Of course, Greek or Cyrillic or Hebrew or Arabic or Chinese... would be a problem for me to recognize (or type in), although it certainly would throw the bots for a loop! Presumably if you're on a computer, you have at least passing familiarity with the Latin alphabet and your keyboard should have some way to type in its letters, so that shouldn't be a major hurdle. Needless to say, the instructions for what to do need to be in an appropriate language.

If bots are too good now at recognizing Latin letters, there are alternatives. You could show clock faces (different styles, different orientations) and ask what time it is (accept answers within 5 minutes or so). You could show abstract shapes and ask for the user to select from a list (using mouse or tab/enter). Note that either of these could pose a problem for visually handicapped people, unless great care was taken in providing an audio equivalent.

[lotman]

Quick idea
A post moderation for first 10 posts until the first 10 posts are approved the posts after 10 posts doesn't show(for example if you post 150 times and your first 10 posts aren't approved none will show),and if approving them is a much of job for the team members you could give it to community helpers with more than 100 posts(i took 10 and 100 posts as an example).Mostly you will find at least 10 team members or smf heroes/super heroes this shouldn't be a much of a problem.
Another one
Disable links in signature and posts for the first few hxxp:collieart.com [nonactive] posts completely so if a spam bot links to any link like www. or wwwdot or www(dot) etc it will give them a error You can't post link(s) until xx posts
Still SMF support should be excluded in both cases

I agree with you. ..

[kat]

Of course you spam do.

[live627]

I even remember how difficult it was to guess the capatcha

go away

[Colin]

I even remember how difficult it was to guess the capatcha

go away

Done

[mrintech]

I even remember how difficult it was to guess the capatcha

go away

Done

[live627]

I even remember how difficult it was to guess the capatcha

go away

Done

Thanks for shouting that spammer.

[KitLightning]

Hmm the captcha haven't bothered me for three years and it still doesn't

[Colin]

I found it slightly frusterating, but you won't have to  deal with it after one more post.

[KitLightning]

Does that mean I can have a sassy avatar after this post

[LiroyvH]

Hehe, yes.

[KitLightning]

noos its not animated, makes me sad

[mashby]

It's a 120X120 px square animation. Avatars are limited to 100px square and have a file size limitation, too.

[KitLightning]

oohhh too late for me to think ...

[Unruler]

I can definitely agree that it's more of a capcha's problem, some letters are just way too similar like u v g y so I cannot tell what the are. Perhaps you should go for capital letters.

And that avatar is terrible btw 

[MorozAlex]

Well i find these letters enough clear and in other case you can listen to the audio version of a captcha. Keep up good work!
__________________________________________________________________
greenavis.com
-Alex Koz

[medicdude]

The correct title for your topic is: "Your Captcha is too hard to read here".

The correct recommendation is to implement a captcha alternative such as PlayThru hxxp:areyouahuman.com [nonactive]

Have nice day.

[emanuele]

The correct recommendation is to implement a captcha alternative such as PlayThru areyouahuman.com

1) if the spambots learn how to play with canvas, those games are easier to solve than a captcha (I can do as many errors I want and I can continue without any sort of halt),
2) have you tried the audio? English is not my first language, but for several years English has been my day-to-day working language and still I can't understand *anything*, absolutely anything (okay, I got a 4 now, but it was just luck).

Of course captcha are not very effective ( ), but the most important thing is usually to have something "different", whatever it is should be something that is not spread enough to be worth the time to understand how to bypass it.

[karalahana]

The correct title for your topic is: "Your  is too hard to read here".

I think this Captcha must be standart all smf forums

[enypsrozar]

It's annoying to make it through your first ten posts here, I agree, but I don't think that it can be changed.  A few spammers still make it through the system here as it is without making life easier for them, so I have to say that I back the Staff at SMF leaving the limit unchanged.

Blame the spammers, for it is their actions that have forced this to be implemented in the first place.

No way, limit is 10 before catchpa is removed? Crap, I thought it was 100. Relief!! And I didn't know you got spammers here. Yes I'm new! Still looking at stickies and tutorials to get a feel of place, there's a lot of info to go through.

[Irisado]

No way, limit is 10 before catchpa is removed? Crap, I thought it was 100. Relief!! And I didn't know you got spammers here. Yes I'm new! Still looking at stickies and tutorials to get a feel of place, there's a lot of info to go through.

There are plenty of spammers which still make it through the net, so just think how many more would break through without the measures which currently exist.

Anyway, as you're discovering, it doesn't look as though it will take you too long to reach the magic ten, and it's a refreshing change to see somebody reading the stickies too .

[enypsrozar]

Anyway, as you're discovering, it doesn't look as though it will take you too long to reach the magic ten, and it's a refreshing change to see somebody reading the stickies too .

True. In another SMF forum you need 100 posts before the catchpa is removed . And they have just upgraded to a 2.0.2, so they are really behind already.

There are plenty of spammers which still make it through the net, so just think how many more would break through without the measures which currently exist.

They manage to get through even with the 100 post minimum and [edit.] and they still manage to get through. Frustrating to deal with. I haven't seen a single spam attack on this forum yet. (lol, it's my first night on) Lol, yeah, I'm still reading the stickies -- there's heaps, lol.

[Kindred]

oh, there are still a fair number of spammers that get through. Luckily, we have a team who tries to keep on top of it - and we have a community who report the spam when they notice it.

Unfortunately, the best ways to prevent spam are not necesarriyl available to this community - primary method: questions instead of CAPTCHA. Unfortunately (in 2.0) questions do not support the multilingual nature of our site. secondary methods: The best of these use third party services - which is something we try to avoid on this site.