I am testing the registration process

[kaydi]

Hi everyone,
There have been some difficulties reported by people attempting to register for the forum, particularly the "captcha" feature in which you have to type the letters you see in that little rectangle.

I had trouble seeing all the letters, but, there is a link to "listen to the letter" and it opens a little window in which an audio player activates and then a voice reads the letters aloud to you.

The letters in the captcha are not very clear, they seem too light to me. I'm looking for a way to make the captcha more user friendly.

Stay tuned.

TechHelp

[The Beautiful Heresy]

I actually did the audio because it was very hard seeing the letters.

[WhiteWings]

There are much easier Captha like things.
Sometimes a combination.

 

• 4 pictures are displayed. Question in what picture you see a zebra.
• 6 + 4 = ?
• Type the second word from the list. House - Snake - Boat - Car

 
I think those methods are easy to use and effective against spambots.
You could also add a little remark that Captha can be refreshed. Some pictures are much harder than others.

[WhiteWings]

Read an analoge clock

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1134
A new and unique Anti-Bot Registration Check. Rather than getting registrants filling in letters, have them tell the time on a clock.

Click link for a few pictures.
I think this mod is perfect.

Thougts:
I peeked a bit in the installation package....
The clock is randomly constructed from different faces and hands. Random time. The whole clock can be rotated a random amount. Some effects can be applied that are trival for humans and horror for bots.

My favorite.

[WhiteWings]

Pictures

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2182

Another perfect mod (tested on RC4) http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=download;mod=2182;id=117941;image

The user is shown a photo and has to click the same photo in a row of 10.
That's a 10% chance. That's why it can be configured to ask the user to repeat the process 1 of 2 times (that's 3 in total.
After that the user gets an auto ban of x hours.
If registrations fails again after those x hours the ban will be y hours.

Thoughts.
Bots can't read pictures but it's quite easy to code something that created a few checksums of the pictures and the capha is useles

[WhiteWings]

Question
Tested on RC1

Here are some examples of types of questions that could work. I usually put a hint in the question so that humans can easily figure out what to enter. Spambots on the other hand don't understand human hints. 

Examples

What year is it? (4 digits)
Are you a robot? (yes or no)
Please leave this answer blank.

It's for v1.x of the forum but read the introduction:
Adds SMF 2.0's anti-spam verification questions to SMF 1.1.7. You can add up to 5 questions which must be answered by the applicant before registration is permitted.
Meaning this is already in the current forum software.
Drop Captha (or make it very easy) and ask a few additional questions.

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1516

[WhiteWings]

3 rounds of pictures + the quations shows above = Good captha
Clock reading + questions = Very good captha.