On 06/12/2013 05:29 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
I think we could have plenty of question captchas of the form:* What letters are missing in "E_ecto_ama" (in order, no spaces)? * What letters are missing in "Gibba_d-Satterth_aite <http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Gibbard-Satterthwaite_theorem>" (in order, no spaces)? etc. (Note the link in the second question) Obviously a programmer could figure out how to defeat this pretty easily, but it would discourage a "just answer all the questions exhaustively" strategy. If you'd like me to make a program that gives a long list of such questions (including links), I would be happy to do so.
I think that one should try using a general-purpose captcha (like Recaptcha) first. If the spammers are just "drive-by spammers", as it were, they'll pick another target. But if the spammers have decided to spam Electorama, and so using a general-purpose captcha doesn't work, then we can try using a more special one.
The advantage of using a general-purpose one is that most users are familiar with it. Thus, there would be a lower barrier non-robots.
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