Warning signs go off in my head whenever I encounted CAPTCHA tests on the web, and they scream: developer laziness!
The user should only be explicitly involved in the anti-spam process when anti-flooding measures, spam-filters, Bayesian analysis, human editors (god forbid! :) and whatever other user-invisible measures have been proven to fail, and fail badly. I always get mad when I'm faced with a CAPTCHA test on the web, and I'm not at all vision impaired*. "Why should I have to prove my humanity to you, you lazy web application? You should be able to figure it out without my help!" I am often heard to mumble, crazily. Also! CAPTCHA tests are breakable: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mori/gimpy/gimpy.html And! CAPTCHA tests do indeed break accessibility (among other things): http://www.bestkungfu.com/archive/?id=445 So, count one vote for: they're mostly a bad idea. -- Andrew Taumoefolau * okay, so I'm a little short-sighted in my left eye :). ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
