What the hell is up with this f***ing CAPTCHA S**t?

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On my blog I have a spambot blocker that gives 4 pictures, and you have to click on a picture in response to a simple question (I think its called sweet captcha). It is so much easier for me to use and keeps the spambots off my site

Having said that, if a member is logged into the Wrong Planet site, then its a bit much then expecting them to go through a captcha to then make a post. If that person is having a particularly bad day then their processing difficulties will be worse too (ASD severity is linked to mood).

Wrong Planet is presenting members with ASD with a frustrating barrier to participation, one which could eventually lead to a meltdown for some. And this is supposed to be an ASD friendly site! I personally don't get meltdowns from this but it pains me to think that others will.

On a site like this we need to be extra careful of our users needs, even if it means disabling captcha for logged in members.

I've temporarily stickied this thread under the hope it might get the attention of Alex - who tends to visit the site very intermittently.

These endless Captchas are driving everyone insane, me included. Alex must be driving members away with this ridiculous strategy. I'm certainly posting less and making shorter posts as a result. It is also a nightmare trying to moderate and administer the site when CloudFlare keeps blocking me from doing things like deleting spammer's accounts. CloudFlare has become a liability and a nightmare.

I'm starting to get a little annoyed with them too. The issue is you can't read most of them, enter the wrong string of letters then suddenly there's an error with your post and you have to hit the back button at least twice and then go through captcha again. It takes me long enough to write replies sometimes let alone figure out a captha

I suspect that it is a problem with the scripting or coding, not something Alex did intentionally. If someone has Alex's private email address, that might help. (I used to have it, but I don't know where it is.)

Okay, I think I may have discovered the problem:

http://blog.cloudflare.com/new-feature-customize-your-cloudflare-challen

WrongPlanet may be infected with a virus, or someone may have made a denial of service attack.. The captchas are a protective device which CloudFlare has built into the software.

Do any of the mods have Alex's phone number?

Last edited by nominalist on 21 Jul 2013, 5:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've had some dealings with this a number of months ago. CloudFlare has an alert level which has three settings from minimal, medium to under attack. By default I think it is set to medium but Alex or someone else has changed this manual setting to "under attack" which is making CloudFlare too sensitive.

In that case, they hacked into the system. None of the possibilities are looking good. Hopefully, someone can get Alex on the phone.

Alex is now aware of the situation and hopefully will fix it. I'll un-sticky this thread when sanity returns to the site.

"I'm a gonna killa da captcha"

thought that was welsh,just shoved this laptop infront of a welsh staff of mine to see if he coud translate it and he got a bit pissy for making that assumption.


these captchas really do head in as have got to ask staff for help to do them every time,they are many a disabled persons nightmare not just visualy impaired or dyslexic,even being on certain medications can affect a persons ability to do them,there does need to be a new technology to stop spambots,it makes the internet a PITA for any atypical users.

its possible in some cases to make browser addons to bypass captchas,have seen these before,pretty sure they were on the firefox addon site but may have been on greasemonkey scripts.
if so that coud be another way around it if some kind WPer who knows this sort of stuff coud whip us up a addon to allow us to use WP like normal.

Are you still getting the captchas?

Haha. It does sort of look Welsh. I think Welsh has more vowels? Slightly? Like:

Blaidd Drwg (from Doctor Who, pronounced something like "blythe droog" and supposed to mean "Bad Wolf" per the show).

It's actually a line of invented words that the writer HP Lovecraft came up with. It means:

"In his house at R'Lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."



Quoted for emphasis.



I got one a few minutes ago. Will probably get one here. (Confirm: captcha for this post too)

They are most frequent when quoting someone else's post. I'll likely get hit with a captcha to post this.

Just got another captcha replying to someone's PM.

I've made some changes. Let's see if you keep getting them.

Yes - on practically every preview of a post and especially if a quote is included or a URL - even a URL to WP content.
Very rarely, I can preview a post a few times, then maybe tweak two words - bang: all subsequent previews now generate a challenge, as does the eventual post submission.
So far, none with this post.