Tuesday, June 05, 2012

I am not a robot

For the last few months I have been getting more and more irritated by the captcha word verification required to comment on certain blogs. The captchas Blogger used to use were perfectly adequate, in my opinion. But Blogger insists on "improving" its user interface. If it ain't broke, don't fix it I say.

The latest two-part captchas Blogger uses seem designed to keep out the good guys and allow in the bad. The statement "Please prove you're not a robot" seems ironic, as only a robot could decipher the letters. This morning, on a blog I won't mention, I had to refresh the captcha three times before getting one that contained only recognizable letters.

Of course if Blogger's captchas were annoying me they were also annoying you, my readers. So I decided to disable word verification on both G4ILO's Blog and One Foot in the Grave. At the same time, I have enabled moderation for comments to posts more than 2 days old. Most of the valid comments are made within that time period anyway. If a comment is made later than that then a further small delay until I approve it will hardly be noticed. Hopefully this will result in an increase in valid comments and fewer spammy ones. But if I find too many spammers are taking advantage of the two day window of opportunity I'll turn moderation on for all comments. If any internet lowlifes are reading this, don't even think about it.

For the benefit of anyone who arrives here looking for a way to turn off word verification, here's how. First, make sure you are using the old Blogger interface (I'd switched back to it already as I could never find anything in the new one.) Then, under Manage Blogs, click on Settings for your blog. Then click on Comments in the row of tabs along the top. The settings you need are on that page.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Julian, I disabled Captchas Blogger since two days, I didn't noticed that they were on again. Before that I never use Captcha. I got only 2 spam reactions over the period of 3 years. I when I see one, I just delete the message. The CAPTCHA's are very annoying and difficult to read sometimes. 73 Paul

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  2. Hello Julian, I already disabled the captchas after a post Paul made long time ago. You're right it can only be turned off in the old blogger interface. At first I did have some spam mail, but blocked them through bloggers moderation. Since this year I only get 2 or 3 in a month. Sometimes nothing. I can live with that. Thanks for disabling the captchas, I can post this a lot easier. 73, Bas

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  3. It's possible to disable with the new interface too. Go to settings and than the page for comments and choose 'no' for word verification. It is not necessary to go to the old Blogger interface. 73 Paul

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  4. Are the audio captchas any more usable for you?

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  5. Glad you find them irritating, I though it was just me with my eyesite that couldn't decipher the increasingly complex captchas.

    Hope the new toy is getting well used.

    Mike

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  6. I've had blogs that won't allow me to post comments even when I type the captcha phrase correctly. After multiple attempts with such sites I invariably give up.

    It's a shame because it prevents me from commenting on blogs that I enjoy reading.

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  7. Good move Julian. I also had to try several times before I got it right and found it very annoying.

    AB2TC - Knut

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