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CAPTCHA Woes Are A Thing Of The Past On The Traveler...Hopefully

Submitted by NPT Staff on August 22, 2012 - 9:59am

Here at the Traveler we've taken a small step, appearance-wise, to make commenting easier: We've gotten rid of the CAPTCHA process.

At least outwardly, that is. In recent days we've been besieged by spammers from the far side of the world. On Monday there were 60 spam comments that we had to deflect. The flood has been running about that pace ever since.

Fortunately, we've found a behind-the-scenes spam blocker that is smarter than the average bear (well, maybe not this bear.)

Without going into details, this new approach allows us to do away with the CAPTCHA process for readers. It's still working in the background, but you don't have to deal with it.

Please let us know if you encounter any problems posting comments. We enjoy your thoughts, ideas, and reactions, and don't want to make it a hardship for you to share them with the rest of the readers.

Comments

Submitted by Dick G. (not verified) on August 22, 2012 - 10:46am.

Good news!!!

Submitted by imtnbke on August 22, 2012 - 12:34pm.

Some of the CAPTCHAs are unreadable, and then there's my worry that when one of the words contains the pre-1800 English long s (ſ, i.e., the character that looks like an f but lacks part or all of the crossbar, as in "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness"), you're forced to type f rather than s and then you're corrupting the text that the CAPTCHA is installing in a searchable research database somewhere. So I'm glad to hear this.

For comprehensive info about the long s, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s. I rather miss it, or should I say miſs it.

Submitted by Dottie (not verified) on August 22, 2012 - 4:30pm.

I tried commenting Monday night, and finally gave up after not being able to correctly type in the correct captchas three different times. "Yea" for improving the site.