No doubt you've been annoyed by a Captcha at some point! You know what I mean — a couple of words with distorted letters that are challenging to read, printed on some noisy background. You have to type them into a box in order to do something, like comment on a blog post.
CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart and the idea is that a person can read it but a "bot" or software program cannot. (Read more about Captcha on Google.
It's a good idea, but lately the Captchas on Blogger have gotten so hard to decipher that readers are giving up and just not entering comments. For that reason, I have removed "Captcha" verification from my blog comments but added moderation for comments on posts more than a week old. Immediately I started getting spam comments. I marked them as spam and they went away. So we'll see how it goes.
I really like getting comments. This blog averages 70-something visitors a day but only a few comments a week. I'd love to get more, as long as they are from real people and not virtual robots.
February 24, 2012
5 comments:
The View from Squirrel Ridge features thousands of views of the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding area. I post frequently so please visit often.
Your comments are appreciated. If you are responding to a post older than a few days, your comment will be held until we have a chance to approve it. Thanks for your patience!
Sorry, anonymous comments cannot be accepted because of the large number of spam comments that come in that way. Also, links that are ads will be deleted.
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I'm sorry to read you got some spam after switching off Captcha.
ReplyDeletePersonally I moderate everything.
I was on the blogger help forum and this latest change has made such a furore that many are no longer commenting. Its a sad day all round for those who blog.
Hi Linda.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment on menem blog. I am glad that you like my tiger.
The prbleme the captcha I have also. Then I turned it off and get so much spam that I have it turned on again.
I wish you a nice day
Elsbeth
Pat and Elsbeth, Thanks for your comments. I hope that Blogger fixes the Captcha gadget so that it is easier to read. I am not on the internet much during the day and I hate to make commenters wait for me to moderate them. I'm trying to find a middle ground that works smoothly.
ReplyDeleteI use both Blogger and WordPress platforms. One of the advantages I see to WordPress (and that is not to say one platform is better than the other) is the Akismet SPAM blocker. 99.9% of the time, it catches the spam.
ReplyDeleteI don't use Captcha as I feel safe from the spam. However I do moderate comments because my blog is routinely "archived". I'd rather not have an offensive comment stick in some archived copy of the site. You see, while WordPress does a good job blocking spam, it is terrible for blacklisting individuals by IP or name.
Craig, thanks for your tips. I've changed my settings to disallow anonymous comments because that's where the spam was coming from. I hope it doesn't prohibit anyone from commenting.
ReplyDelete