Comments on: TV is Big Brother http://arlof.com/blog/2007/tv-is-big-brother/ improving the relationship between people and their things Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:14:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Aaron http://arlof.com/blog/2007/tv-is-big-brother/#comment-9 Aaron Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:59:14 +0000 http://arlof.com/blog/2007/tv-is-big-brother/#comment-9 There is one option I've seen on a few sites. There is a line asking you to "type this word" which changes when you refresh the page. I'm not sure what it's called. Since I don't get much traffic yet, moderating comments works for for me now. I did a quick search and found a variation of the captcha called <a href="http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reCaptcha</a>. It's a scan of words in books. Seems to work the same as captcha but more readable to humans than the stupid computer generated captcha images. There is one option I’ve seen on a few sites. There is a line asking you to “type this word” which changes when you refresh the page. I’m not sure what it’s called. Since I don’t get much traffic yet, moderating comments works for for me now.
I did a quick search and found a variation of the captcha called reCaptcha. It’s a scan of words in books. Seems to work the same as captcha but more readable to humans than the stupid computer generated captcha images.

]]> By: Michael Bass http://arlof.com/blog/2007/tv-is-big-brother/#comment-8 Michael Bass Tue, 18 Dec 2007 06:26:44 +0000 http://arlof.com/blog/2007/tv-is-big-brother/#comment-8 Thanks for telling me about the problem... I couldn't figure out why people stopped leaving comments altogether. Oh, and I hate the f#cking captcha just as much as you. I wish I had a better solution though... for a while I had been leaving my comments open, like this blog, for anyone to post and used Akismet to filter out my spam. I started to get such large amounts of spam that it ended up using all of my server resources just to accept and save all the incoming data, to the point of knocking my site offline. Akismet was only helping me get rid of the spam after the fact. I tried using my .htaccess to limit bots and only allow my users to post. I've also tried to disable anything that automatically fills in the blanks, and I've done everything possible to prevent people from having to become "members." *CRINGE* Anyway if you've got a better way to handle the spam problem while still allowing for easy comments I would love to know a better solution. Thanks for the feedback. Thanks for telling me about the problem… I couldn’t figure out why people stopped leaving comments altogether.

Oh, and I hate the f#cking captcha just as much as you. I wish I had a better solution though… for a while I had been leaving my comments open, like this blog, for anyone to post and used Akismet to filter out my spam. I started to get such large amounts of spam that it ended up using all of my server resources just to accept and save all the incoming data, to the point of knocking my site offline. Akismet
was only helping me get rid of the spam after the fact. I tried using my .htaccess to limit bots and only allow my users to post. I’ve also tried to disable anything that automatically fills in the blanks, and I’ve done everything possible to prevent people from having to become “members.” *CRINGE*

Anyway if you’ve got a better way to handle the spam problem while still allowing for easy comments I would love to know a better solution. Thanks for the feedback.

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