An open letter to all directory owners, and I am going to shout this next line: TURN DOWN YOUR CAPTCHA CODE!!!! You do NOT need an 8-digit, alpha/numeric Captcha with maximum distortion on your PR1 directory!!!! If you'd take the time to look through the PHPLD admin, you'll see a place where you can turn down the captcha so that an actual human being can read it! Yeesh!
Yes, you are right. I have since removed it from my directory www.alternativefront.com just for submitters convenience thought its not a phpld based directory.
thanks for your remind, it will let you more easy to spam our directories, lame guy created lame thread, not bad.
Ahhh, what the heck let's do 20 characters and see if you can ever put in the captcha code correctly?!!!!! LOL On a serious note though, it is annoying.. I agree, use 5 digits (I use 5 or 6).
Being in directory field from 2006 lemme too SHOUT IT OUT: Its none of your business whatsoever who does what with captcha. Also dear PR freak, if you have a problem the exit door is open for you. Don't submitter, do we care if you? Also keeping directories free and without captcha means inviting tons of junk submissions and spam. Hope you understand.
If people would quit spamming directories, we could turn captcha off completely. But that won't happen, so captcha is needed. Software like xRumer can handle simple captcha, with minimal distortion, so adding more distortion and a longer captcha is needed.
Turn captcha off?Is like leaving your house door open...i am sure that the guest are not going to wait outside to let them in but...spammers will come in your house Now from the serious point of this thread i believe that captcha with 7 alphanumeric digits and heavy distortion is not easy even for human to read.
People should advise other to use the free re-captcha mod rather than the standard. Its a lot more user friendly.
Sometimes Captcha is a problem for those who submit but when there is no captcha it is a big problem for directory owners...
Yeah, I agree! A captcha is needed. Anyways, I have replaced captcha with a simple enter text request that bots cannot answer to
While I do agree with everyone who has said captcha is needed to be able to limit spam, there are some things that can be done that many are not doing. As the original poster suggested, captcha is one thing, using extreme distortion turns it into a guessing game. If your directory script allows for it, do not use the numbers zero and one and the letters i, l, and oh. Those are some of the hardest letters and numbers to recognize. Using the highest distortion setting only impacts what people can see, not the bots.
I must admit, the spam guard/captcha on phplynx is something I was impressed with. There will be like 5 small lines, the question will be how many are red or something simple like that. That's the sort of thing I like to see. Another was the one I used in the mod I made for phpLinkBid, with the simple maths question.
I am amused, turn off capthca is not the solution, so a better thing would be to find a way to fight spam using an alternative that you could suggest. Until then, Captcha would show up on most of the directories sir!
I don't like captchas. I think that there are many other ways to protect site from automatic submissions. For example ask some questions. Like "What's the 3rd letter in the word SMILE?"
If I can't fill in the captcha after 2 attempts I leave the site. Catcha = lost business Agree with Mousee above - there are far far far far better methods than captcha. Also catcha very bad for accessiblity.
Use Captcha? Absolutely. Make Captcha reasonably easy to enter? Yes. If you make it too hard, people will give up. And to the guy above who said, "If you don't like my captcha, you can use the exit door." Actually, I absolutely would. If I am submitting to 1000 directories and one of the captchas is too hard, I just skip it.
-- ONCE AGAIN READ THE QUOTED TEXT ABOVE -- To all those people who can't read properly, thundercow mentioned a very good point and it goes to a directory owner's favor. He is NOT asking you to remove the captcha. All he is trying to tell you that you don't need annoying 8 letter captchas. 5 or 6 letter captchas are enough to avoid spam and make it easy on a submitter's eyes. Please read properly, he is not asking you to remove it, just lower the intensity and number of captcha letters so that a valid submitter wont simply close your site since he/she can't read the numbers or getting tough time to read the letters/numbers in your captcha. Some people talked about being a PR whore, well .. the whole point is traffic and a few people like better PR sites. So, it is totally a different topic altogether and has nothing to do with captcha. Please read before you hurt your fingers typing and waste your time in replying junk posts which have no relevancy to the thread.
ROFL .. You are in Directory Field since 2006 and calling others PR freak .. HoHoHo .. Please read, he didnt say REMOVE captcha. He requested directory owners to lower the intensity and word count of captcha. It is obvious, you need to attend 'Learn English' classes.