Tuesday, May 08, 2007

I am not as lame as I sometimes seem

(or death to word verification)

My dear blogger friends,

I know that I am bad about commenting on your blogs, but just a note to say that I write probably double the number of comments that go up. The problem is that I am super, super ADD (not really but I often feel like it). And half of the time I write comments on your blog, do the word verification, don't realize that I FAILED the word verification test, and then eventually close my browser.

This week alone, I tried to write Mary a comment about a good restaurant in Ukiah (and to ask her to bring me back some Navarro wine), and then I tried to write a comment to Jennifer about this lovely post, and those are just the ones I can remember.

I swear, I know it's a necessary evil in the days of spam and robot comments. But sheesh, it's killing this thirty-something San Franciscan. And really, if I can't figure it out I wonder how many other people it is driving crazy as well.

Please tell me that I am not alone in this absolute hatred of word verification!

(This all brings to mind this comment thread from Cookiecrumb's blog a while back.)


This Post was written by Jen Maiser from Life Begins at 30.

19 comments:

meathenge said...

Oh holy crikees. Man, I am SO with you. I hate those damned things. My eye sight ain't all that great and it usually takes me 3 to 4 times to get the damned thing right. And if that doesn't steam my boat already, Google cancelled my blogger account and I wasn't able to post comments on blogger boards using my alias at ALL. They wanted to tie my commenting name to my gmail account, which I didn't have. I had to get a damned gmail account just so I could look cool when posting. Grrrrr.

To add salt to an already sore spot, blogger's comment engine goes down with the slightest of breeze. I have a permanant text file sitting on my desktop just so when it does go down, I can save my comment and try again another day.

That's only half the nightmare. Meathenge has been swallowing comments from fellow bloggers for years. GONE. Slurp! I get about 22,000 comment spam in 2 weeks. For nearly 2 years I combed through each one to make sure everyone got posted.

OooOoooo, don't get me started. I could go on and on. And on. ON.

xo, Biggles

ps - today it looks like "mbahb". Let's see if I get it right.

Nope, now let's try "rocerv"

Anonymous said...

All. The. Time. And like you, I understand the need for it, but lordy. The worst are the ones where you get intercepted to enter the CAPTCHA *after* you've submitted your comment, so if you've moved on to another window/tab/phase of your life, it's dead in the water. Stupid spambots.

Anonymous said...

Word verification is just hideous...and I don't really get it... maybe I haven't been targeted yet, or don't have sufficient traffice, or whatever, but only once have I had any machine-generated comments on my blog... is that unusual?

thepassionatecook said...

i totally agree. i especially hate it that by the time you have finished writing your comment (especially on blogger) the session has timed out so after you've wrecked your brain over the word in question, it gives you an error message and a new word.
but i loathe blogger as it is as i can't for the life of me figure out why i've been able to post on foodblogs'cool and no all if a sudden i can't... technology! can't live with it, can't live without it...

nika said...

it doesnt matter how many times I leave a comment at my fav blogs.. I always forget to go back to the page that it goes to for the word verification.. This blogger type where it is on the same page as the comment - thats not so bad.. its when you hit submit and THEN it goes to verification that I lose the most comments and I get so frustrated because I may not realize it until that window was closed... such a craptastic system that is.

meathenge said...

And yet, when you put that first bit of ham slice in your mouth, all worries just fade away.

Biggles

Anita (Married... with dinner) said...

Stephanie: Count your blessings. Spam is the bane of my existence as a blogger and blog-admin, although Spam Karma, on top of Akismet, is helping a LOT.

Sean: The captcha-after-posting issue comes up on some blogs (like ours) because we only force commenters to verify themselves if they fail other SpamKarma filters.

On the flip side, if you comment more than once from the same domain and/or IP, this helps your karma score, and eventually your comments get posted without going through captcha or even entering the moderation queue -- as yours do on our blog, for example.

Sam said...

jen - all my comments are waiting helplessly on the captcha page too.

Andrew said...

I added a captcha - just a simple form really - and it cut my spam comments from 1000s a day to less than 100. Captchas are here to stay; I dont like them much but my site would grind to a halt without them.

Kalyn Denny said...

When I hear people talk about getting 1000 spam comments in a day, this is one area where I'm really happy to be on Blogger. Although I don't love the word verification, I've never had a problem with automated comments, not even once.

And Jen, I've never once thought of you as lame!

Owen said...

you might want to look into the math problem captcha solutions - they often have much easier to type answers - the problem of course is that you have to be able to add...also not sure if there is one for blogger

Andrea said...

I hate the captcha, too, but I understand the need for it. Since I run a WordPress blog, I use Akismet, Spam Karma, AND Bad Behavior to chase away the spambots, and they work beautifully 99% of the time.

Cate said...

There are a lot of times when the letters are so squished, it's hard to make out. I turned my word verification off today, in a very brave move, but kept owner approval on, so it should be ok.

Meeta K. Wolff said...

There is nothing lame about you! I used to have captcha on my blog too, but as I blogged and left comments on other blogs, realized how irritated I got with them. So, I turned it off! I agree with Kalyn, I am on Blogger and do not have that, that much spam coming my way. Andrew 1000 spam a day WOWW!!

Anyway, I hear you!

Pepper said...

I reall prefer using moderation instead, though I don't get tons of comments. If I got multiple comments per day then I would probably switch back to using it.

Lisa Fain (Homesick Texan) said...

Yes, nothing makes me feel more blind and dyslexic than word verification, which is why I turned it off on my blog. I haven't had any problems (knock on wood) but I'm on Blogger, and as Kalyn notes, it seems to do a good job of keeping the spambots at bay.

shuna fish lydon said...

Jen! How cute you are!

I hear you.

What I do now, especially when leaving a comment that's more than one sentence, I hit contro C before trying to make out the CAPTCHA. this way if things get weird I can just paste it in a second time.

Typepad told me recently that the only time automatic verification gets turned on is when people write code in the body of their text of the comment.

But I don't have it on specifically. I only got hit when I was blogging from a dial-up connection in the UK.

Keep trying girl-- we love your voice!

s'kat said...

It usually takes me at least two tries to get it right, and that on a good day.

I don't understand why it can't be more clear, like the verifications that I've seen on a Mac blog? I nail it every time.

Alice Q. Foodie said...

I'd swear that half the time it just makes you do it twice, just for fun. Thanks for that link back to Cookiecrumb's blog - that was priceless. Qwoosk!