As you may have noticed, we’ve fixed TTAG’s comments system. Your bon mots will now appear immediately—unless they fall afoul of common spam criteria (e.g. too many embedded links). To achieve this miracle we disabled WordPress’s Akismet spam filter and enabled Captcha. Some of you may not have noticed; the above box doesn’t appear for commentators that have an account on the TTAG blog. Some of you may. The Captcha system keeps spambots from posting stuff while allowing humans to get through. I know: it sucks to have to fill out the form every time you submit a comment. But this frees RF and Dan to do something other than releasing comments from an over-zealous spam filter and deliver unto you amazingly awesome content. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
I’d be fine with a one-time member registration process if it simplifies things. Every site we visit and search we do, every comment we make, and all our emails are already recorded by government.
Word
I guess I’m in the club, because I haven’t seen the Captcha yet. If it’s some sort of system that clears the posting for the regulars, and doesn’t inhibit the ability of the one-offs or infrequent posters, that seems like the best of both worlds to me.
+1
Me too. I think I got cleared because Robert and Dan got sick of all the emails I kept sending them about my comments not printing.
All of you fools are in the same boat with me: we post comments with sufficient frequency that we qualify.
I prefer to think of it as being strongly interested and engaged. Not obssessive. At all. No sir.
You can ask ’em. I was really, really nice about comments this time. I sent them one email at about 1300 yesterday, when the comments system had been down about an hour, but I haven’t bothered ’em since.
Make an account, otherwise you can’t complain. You just need a valid email address.
Where do I need to make an account?
ill make an acvount! i love this site! but i have yet to see this captcha box
Just testing… Please insert something pithy [ED: something pithy] here
“Rod A into slot B”
This post is a test.
Also, keep up the great work TTAG staff!
A test with Safari…
Hope it works, cause I can’t always de scramble those flippin words.
If you get it wrong, it’ll give you a second try with a different string.
For those of you who suck at decoding CAPTCHA strings visually, if you look close you’ll also find that there’s an audio option. It’s there for the visually impaired but I know folks who use it because they have trouble sorting out the regular CAPTCHAs.
No Captcha for me.
I have an account but I guess I’m not in the “cool kids club”. I have an impossible riddle of a captcha in front of me.
Reaching levels of 2004 complexity! 😀
Hooray!
I was wondering if this was going to be the result of the spam-filter meltdown. This is actually much better than I expected — some sites make you fill out a CAPTCHA every. damn. comment.
It’s amazing how much TTAG declined in value and interest for me over the last week as the comment black-hole problem worsened. More than half the value of this site is in the discussion threads following the article.
Trust me — the site stats reflect that frustration.
If it isn’t working as well as expected, give me a holler.
How about an incentive program paying regulars five cents per word we type in the comments? I got the idea from the California politicians.
($1.20 please)
That would be like paying software engineers a bounty on every bug they fix: a self-perpetuating fountain of money for the participants.
Ha if I could get paid for the articles I submit we would be on a role!!! Just kidding.. 😉
AlphaGeek, that’s one of my all time favorite management brainwaves.
keep up the good work Nick
I’m seeing occasional significant slowness in processing posted comments, but that’s probably because everyone’s loins have been aching for the sweet release of a working comment system.
Blame Chris Dumm for that graphic image, BTW. 🙂
Hmm, I wonder if I’m in the cool kid club.
EDIT: Yup, feels good man.
Well, I suppose Ill find out if I get the “captcha” as well….
EDIT: Woooo it worked. Feel free to remove if desired.
test..w00t!
Captcha?
EDIT: Nope. Sweet.
Did I make the cut?
Oh thank god. No captcha for me. I was afraid RF was going to flip it on after all the emails I send him
Hopefully captcha will filter out the bots, but I fear they’ll never go away.
Still have a captcha… 🙁
We can still be friends, right?
Little known fact, by using reCAPTCHA you are helping digitize books. So technically you could type anything in for the second (easier to read) word.
http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore
You almost took the words out of my mouth. I saw a show on “Nova Science Now” with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and I think it’s way cool. 🙂
Testes testes…one two….three?
EDIT: Awesome, no captcha for me, and I rarely post. I feel cool.
Three Testes?? Does that make you trisexual??
Trisexual – they’ll “tri” anything sexual.
I feel special, too.
I was going to rage if I had to do the silly captcha thing.
(At least now I know what to call it.)
In case anyone else is wondering, CAPTCHA is an acronym. (I swear I’m not shouting it at you.) It stands for:
Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
The Wikipedia page is an interesting read even if you skip over all of the geeky details.
Turing test? I hadn’t planned to go anywhere.
Survey says…
SUCCESS! You can’t Captcha me!
Testing…..testing…..testing. Houston, we have ignition.
I’m typing the captcha and I still get the “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
How do I get an account to make my life easier?
I can see the captchas from here….
In the main, I HATE Captchas, which have seemed to me somewhat glitchy, in that often I have had to enter in code words several times before I finally got it right, and despite having no known visual processing problems. But I understand why y’all felt this change was necessary.
Every one I’ve seen has a link or button to change the image if you can’t get the one.
I guess it will work.
Hmmm, lets see if this makes it. I haven’t been able to post, guess i’ve been bad.
CAPTCHA is creepy but whatevs.
Testing to see if I’m on CAPTCHA island…
This post is a test.
EDIT: Hooray!
Testing.
Will comments made before the fix be posted, or are you finished filtering old comments?
I’m guessing that if you haven’t seen it by now, it’s gone. Lost in the shuffle.