I managed to register with the forum (obviously) after guessing the confirmation code on only the second attempt! However, I needed to use quite a bit of imagination to figure it out, and the first code I was presented with had me completely baffled.

Is there a chance you could make it slightly easier for mere mortals?

But it's the ability to use our imagination which separates us lot from automatic spambots! I think CAPTCHAs need to be a little bit challenging in registration pages, just so that they actually perform their function well. And at least you only have to do it once!

(Some sites have text-to-speech facilities too, which will say the word - don't know if our version supports that).

@RichTW, no, we don't have text-to-speech functionality on the captcha ... getting that to work reliably across all potential platforms (*shudder* RISC OS!) is unfeasible.

@DavidB, as Rich says - the CAPTCHA has to be challenging to filter the automated spambot registrations. Unfortunately, even the complex one we currently use has recently been breached on one of the forums I manage, so that should give you some impression of the scale of the problem.

I am trialling the removal of the image captcha, using text question only. If it holds, I may move the Retro Software forum over to that in the future.

As Rich has also pointed out, tho - you only have to register once, so I don't see it as a huge inconvenience. For anyone who simply can't manage it, there's also the option of emailing contact@retrosoftware.co.uk to ask for help.

Sam.

Yes the captcha images are designed to be confusing, this is so the human mind can figure it out, but the spambot software can't. Well in theory of course, in reality there is too much money to be made from spam advertisement. Also the system sometimes screws up, and does things like overlapping letters or distorting them is such a way as to be unreadable.

Send all complaints about captcha to:
Organised Crime
Moscow, Russia,
via ICBM 'special' delivery.

There are other tricks to booby trap the signup form, so certain standard fields are renamed/missing from the page but left in the code as bot traps. I'm sure Samwise knows what I mean.

I do, yes. The options for spam prevention are as varied as the spambots we're trying to keep out. Our precautions here have been pretty good - we haven't had any problems with spambots since this site launched, and none over at *./STH whilst I've been involved in the overseeing of it, either.

However, I take David's point seriously and I know the graphical CAPTCHA can be a problem for some ppl due to accessibility reasons.

As I said, I'm trialling the removal of the image captcha on another forum. If it holds, we can do the same with this forum too. I just want to leave it a few weeks to make sure nothing unwanted slips through.

Sam.

OK, I've extended the trial to this forum too. I've removed the graphical CAPTCHA completely.

Sam.

Thanks for taking a chance with this. I don't usually have problems with CAPTCHAs - maybe my pattern recognition skills aren't what they used to be.