Image Captchas are beginning to appear all over the internet, most of them being a real nuisance. You see them when you are buying online products and are signing up for various forums.. Although recently they have started appearing on Wordpress Blogs!! Could this be slowing down your readers opinions?
Think about it. Your viewers are on your blog and have to enter a stupid captcha form that tests their visual skills before they can submit their opinions. Why should they even bother? With a blog being created every second* (*According to BBC and Technorati’s statistics), there surely must be another blog that offers the same type of content that you do.
Instead of trying to screw spam-bots using the Captchas, why don’t you just install Wordpress’s default spam filter.. Askimet? Then you don’t hassle the “Real” commenter’s that have said their piece on your article, and the ones advertising free viagara are blocked. (Note: For putting the word Viagara in this post, I have no doubt that I will recieve hundreds of bots commenting on this post, trying to obtain links through my keyword choice)
So just a warning to everyone that uses the image captchas.. not the ones that ask “Is the sun hot or cold?” – those are all fine and just require a 3 letter answer, don’t expect me to leave my opinion on what you wrote. I just don’t have the time to figure out the screwed up words in your annoying spam filter 
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23 Comments
I would have to say that captcha is slowing down on the comments. I know when I come across them I tend to move on. Keep it simple and thingsd tend to flow.
Steve Scor’s last blog post..The Video Education of The Blog Squad
This is absolutely true , Askimet does a very decent job of catching spam and all you need is a wordpress key , which is free to activate it.
Nishadha’s last blog post..My Favourite Sri Lankan Blogger
I use the wp-spam-free plugin – so it blocks a lot of automatic junk. I use askimet as well – and then still i have to manually remove a few more.
Akismet has done wonders for my blog. I look for various plugins that will enhance my reader’s experience as I want to encourage them to leave a comment before moving on. Like you, I have CommentLuv installed.BTW, I found you via Entrecard.
Matt Keegan’s last blog post..By: The Article Writer – MyBlogLog
I have Akismet but it allows too many bots to leave nasty little comments about drugs on my site. Now I added a simple word verification for people and if they are really serious about commenting, they will surely understand what that is for and use it. I also use commentluv.
Blue Licorice’s last blog post..Is there a Shrangri La on Earth?
@ Nishadha – Akismet is great, isn’t it??
@Matt Ellsworth – I’m surprised that you use two spam filters and still need to manually remove some.. Then again, you get these ones that say, “Great Post! I really enjoyed your post on “Title X”.” – And then they leave their link inside of their name, getting a free link back to their website when you use No-follow removed. :S
@ Matt Keagan – Speaking of which, if you want some cool plugins, just scroll back a couple posts and you’ll find some of my “Unique Wordpress Plugins” posts.. Just if your interested though of course. I like entrecard, but not their new advertising program, it sorta defeats the purpose of dropping.
@ Blue Licorice – I went to your blog and saw the word verification, which is completely alright considering that it is three letters. This post was more directed to the blogs who use that “Spam Captcha” that has two words that are distorted with lines through it.
Very true indeed and a point well made. Its really sad that I have to do this on Digg too to share something that’s good. I have put in Akismet on my blog and that does take care of all spamming. Wonder why people dont use it instead of other visitor harrassing tools like captcha. Hope a lot of people read this blog and understand what a captcha or something similar does.
moserw’s last blog post..Links for 2008-04-22 [Digg]
I use Akismet as well.
Can’t figure out why others get such great pleasure from spamming blogs. They must know in the back of their pea brained mind that it will be deleted.
At times I end with spam that goes on like forever. Loads of them, takes forever to scroll through them. I skim them cause somewhere in the midst there may bbe a comment worth keeping
Wendy’s last blog post..Interesting Blogs, Where are YOU??
I completely understand the point of this post. But as the commentluv link to my blog will reveal, I had recently been removed from the google index due to comment spam links finding their way into some of my blog’s template pages. For the day or so my sites winked into oblivion, i kept thinking about all the hours of hard work gone down the drain.I don’t use captcha….the wp spamfree seems to be doing the job.But I’m definitely once-bitten twice-shy!
I prefer akismet to captcha, but captcha is much more useful in free email or free website services… but not for blog ..
brandon’s last blog post..Ramalan Satrio piningit
@ “…captcha is much more useful in free email or free website services… but not for blog ..”
CAPTCHA is used to deter spammers. Spammers not only try to sign up for free email and website services, but they also try to leave spammy comments on blogs. So, what exactly is the difference? Why should CAPTCHA be used in free email or website services, but not on a blog?
@ “So just a warning to everyone that uses the image captchas.. not the ones that ask “Is the sun hot or cold?” – those are all fine and just require a 3 letter answer, don’t expect me to leave my opinion on what you wrote. I just don’t have the time to figure out the screwed up words in your annoying spam filter.”
Are you serious? Unless you’re a bot, the CAPTCHAs shouldn’t be too hard to read. I can’t believe that you don’t mind filling out a 3-letter challenge, but anything more, and you just refuse to leave a comment. LOL.
And, the people who are going along with you…when I came across this post, I thought that you would have a lot of people who disagreed with you. I’m shocked that they are in agreeance with you on the CAPTCHA issue.
@ “Why should they even bother? With a blog being created every second* (*According to BBC and Technorati’s statistics), there surely must be another blog that offers the same type of content that you do.”
If they really want to leave a comment, they will do so. I doubt that they will Google that topic to find another blog that doesn’t have CAPTCHA.
I’d rather make my visitors fill out a CAPTCHA than to only use Akismet, which will result in some of my visitors’ comments being wrongly classified as spam. I’ve heard of people not being able to post to their own blog because of Akismet thinking that they’re spammers. I’d rather decide for myself if someone is a spammer. And, if I were leaving a comment on a blog, I would be more annoyed with my comment not being posted at all because of Akismet, than the blogger making me take 3 seconds to fill out a CAPTCHA.
Blogs are fueled by a community of an author, and it’s loyal commenters – The opinions of others really add to the topic of the post (such as this one). Rather in a website or email, they aren’t as crucial for user interaction.
I know that some of those words are amazingly hard to figure out – some morphing into others, just to have to type it in again. The three letter word was just an example – Competition on the internet is way to fierce in order for your visitor to do more work than they must. There are many blogs in my niche, so I must streamline the community and comment interface – Captchas being unnecessary.
99.7% of the time, Akismet will do its job. But your last point is very intriguing.
I personally prefer NOT to make my users jump through hoops to interact with my site (yes, CAPTCHA is a hoop, especially when you can’t read the friggin’ word). But at the same time, I don’t get all that irritated when I have to use it here and there when commenting on other blogs because I see it being used a lot less than I used to. What I really get irritated with is having to register to comment. That’s just dumb.
The worst captchas are the ones in link directories. Practically you can’t read if they are upper or lower case letters. A real time waster. Especially to link hungry people like me that submit niche blogs to like a hundred directories.
Akismet misses out quite a few spams and flags manny legitimate comments. Manually going through all of them is a daunting task.
I would recommend Wp-Spamfree ( http://www.pallab.net/2008/07/01/wp-spamfree-banish-comment-spam/ ). It stops 100% spam comments originating from bots. I have been using Wp-Spamfree and Wp-Spamfree only for more than a year. Give it a try, I am confident it would tempt you to ditch everything else. You won’t face issues like http://bradblogging.com/comments/blog-comment-spam-is-getting-smarter/
Another plugin with similar approach (however I havent tried it) is Ravens antispam.
Those are actualy not that bad – they’re usualy pretty easy to input. The worst are the “maths questions”. When after inputing that 0+0 = 0 it tells me that I “apparently failed maths”. WTF?! It’s not my fault that the captcha is broke.
I think simple captcha’s are fine, but difficult ones definitely turn away users, especially if they fail the captcha the first time.
Thanks for this post. I’m considering taking off the captcha on my blog. It really is annoying to have to go through a rigamarole just to leave a short comment….
Anyone know if blogspot offers alternative spam filters?
few days back while reading blogs i landed to a blog of a commentator there and found it interesting. but i was not able to submit the comment because of the captcha code error coming again n again. the captcha code was “8+10 = ??” its so simple that we cannot get wrong but still on submitting it showed i was wrong.
you know what I hate the most? If the captcha show the math…hate it…coz I hate math…
Say no more… hate it most.
I totally agree to you blog on this one. Akismet is always abetter choice compared to putting up captcha….
I passionately hate capatcha. I have had hundreds of comments eaten by those damn filters. Like you said, use the default spam filter then take the time to look through your comments. Sorting through a handful of spam comments is worth letting your readers get the most out of their stay on the site!
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