Wgfunstorm's Profile

- wgfunstorm
- - Joined 30 Nov, 2011
  - 34 topics • 122 posts
- 1
- 1 Dec, 2011
- Quote
Oh my wow. Thanks so much for the in-depth replies, this is one of the best topics I've read on the subject, better than anything I found through Google at the time.

I'll try the registration page first and see how it goes.

AKismet does look good, I looked at it for out blog comments but it just seems a little too pricey before you have some actual traffic (it costs more than our webhost!!)

I heard about the captcha sweatshops in India too... crazy stuff right? I wonder how much of it is myth, but this kind of stuff has also shown up on amazon's mturk before so there's obviously a market for it.

n regards to CAPTCHAS I want to avoid them. They are very inaccessible (which I care about) and I'm very certain they deter people from following through with signing up. Personally I've been on websites and had a CAPTCHA, got it wrong and the form was handled badly and asked me to re-enter a lot of fields. Sometimes you get stuck in a washing mashine of re-entering fields and CAPTCHAS and at the end of the day who can be bothered to do that? Best to not lose sign ups if possible. One way to do that is by not using a CAPTCHA.

Amen! I owe you a beer.

<img src="smileys/smiley32.gif" border="0" align="middle" />
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- wgfunstorm
- - Joined 30 Nov, 2011
  - 34 topics • 122 posts
- 1
- 30 Nov, 2011
- Quote
So I'm really impressed by how easy it is to sign up, yet there is no spam.

I set up a forum recently, which didn't even have any real posts before spam started showing up. I tried a bunch of annoying captchas, but none worked. Eventually I settled one that asks a customized question (eg "Are apples a fruit? Answer yes or no."), which has put a stop to the spam. But if possible, I'd like to get rid of it.

So! Any tips or tricks you're willing to share? You guys must obviously have some up your sleeve <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

The only option I can think of is to dig into the source and try to modify/customize it in a way that will break automated tools when they encounter something they don't recognize. But without knowing anything about the tools used, this sounds like it will be tricky and mostly trial & error.

Another suggestion I read was to block a specific time zone completely which is used by spam programs, but uninhibited by humans, but that didn't help.