Gremlins! - "Join Fedora" captcha is Unreadable

[Clint Savage]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Clint Savage wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>> > On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Clint Savage wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mike McGrath <mmcgrath at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >> > On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Ian Weller wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 09:32:42AM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
>> >> >> > At present there are no known problems, can you get them to send a screen
>> >> >> > shot of the capcha our way?
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> Here's seven fairly unreadable ones, out of a random sample of about
>> >> >> 40-50 refreshes.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> http://ianweller.fedorapeople.org/captcha/
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >> > Pooh, this is an opinion one, I can read each of those without issue.
>> >> > We'll have to see what options we have.
>> >> >
>> >> >        -Mike
>> >>
>> >> I don't think it's an opinion one as much as what a particular eye can
>> >> see.  In my case, I can read 'most' of them with little to no effort,
>> >> but there were at least 3 that I had to squint or move closer to read.
>> >>  I've had perfect vision all of my life.  What I don't understand is
>> >> the value of having colored boxes that make it extremely difficult for
>> >> the eyes to focus on the letters.
>> >>
>> >> BTW, I understand what a captcha is and its intended purpose, but I
>> >> would argue that this is only one step of many for preventing computer
>> >> bots to invade the fedora project.  Mitigation is the goal here, I
>> >> don't think it's possible to eliminate all bots, but it is possible to
>> >> eliminate a few potential contributors because of something simple
>> >> like this getting in the way.
>> >>
>> >
>> > it's a new technology to us, I'd rather try to get it fixed before
>> > abandoning it.
>> >
>> >        -Mike
>>
>> Oh, I wasn't suggesting abandoning it, I think it's great.  I just
>> wonder if we could tone it down some.  Sorry if I implied such a
>> thing, I am excited to see that we're using CAPTCHA.
>>
>
> I'm not actually sure, here's the app we're using:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/tgcaptcha/
>
> It's a pretty easy change to start using Vanasco-Dowty but it gets tricky.
> neither one is particularly easy to read (which I guess is the point)
>
>        -Mike

Actually the Vanasco-Dowty is *much* easier to read (from what I see
on their google code page).  I can read the McDermott CAPTCHA, but it
takes my eyes more effort and I had to squint a little.  This is just
my experience, but I think the Vanasco-Dowty would be a good
compromise.

Clint