At the Ref Desk (5/22/18): Got an IM request explaining in great detail (several sentences in fact) what kind of article the person was looking for. Only thing missing -- the topic. Oh well... [more...]

Captcha for Humanists

Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 2/21/07 (12:36pm)

Submission for the redesign of 'captcha' according to humanistic principles (patent pending):

Topic: 
Half-Serious

2 comments

by Bradford Knowlton on Sat, 2/24/07 (6:00pm)

I just wonder, if someone wanted to spam the site, they could easily create rhyming words by just adding a few letters to the last letters of the required word, for example:

rhymes with: note?

would snote or rnote pass the test? what about denote? how about Orange?

ok, maybe not the last one, but really how precise could the check be to still allow humans to pass the test?

by Leo Klein on Sat, 2/24/07 (6:16pm)

Well, it'd have to be English. Not only does this system require the ability to rhyme but the words have to be spelled correctly.

Already an improvement!

The note/de-note issue is a possible vulnerability. I'm not sure by how much. We'd probably need a work-around.