Re: [CODE4LIB] perl recaptcha?

[- Jonathan Rochkind, Johns Hopkins Univ.]

Akismet looks great, I hadn't been familiar with this before.

But it doesn't look to me like a university and/or library can use 
Akismet for free; it looks like it might be $25/month ($300 a year), 
which is a bit steep.  But I'm not certain; anyone know if a university 
library can maybe in fact use it for free?

Jonathan

Ross Singer wrote:
What about Akismet?

-Ross.

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
  
The Recaptcha device specifically also provides an audio test. But point
taken, even so it could prevent accessibility challenges.

Nevertheless, when my system is currently receiving around one software
powered spam per minute, I need a quick pre-built drop-in solution to this;
I don't have time to write my own AI!  If you have any other free or
affordable pre-built drop-in solutions to spam protection to suggest, this
would be a great forum to do so!

My particular situation isn't even a web forum---it's a comment form that
does nothing but send email to librarians. But the spam bots don't know
that, and are sending 1 spam per minute to it.  "Pre-moderation" is not a
solution; that's what we're doing now, but we can't afford to hire an FTE
just to seperate our actual user feedback from spam!

Jonathan

MJ Ray wrote:
    
Jonathan Rochkind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...]

      
And then fails. Anyone managed to do this, or have any other advice for
using Recaptcha from perl?

        
Please don't use it as a barrier on the only access route to a
service, else you will be locking out humans with vision or hearing
problems, or even simply high browser security settings.

More info: http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/

If you want to combat spam, there are better ways, including some
premoderation and heuristic checks of user submissions.  After all,
Recaptcha doesn't stop all human-powered spam (whether directly by a
spammer or by porn-trojans).

Hope that helps,

      
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu

    

  

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu