Comment Re:There should be laws (Score 1) 79
I used to run a phpBB forum for a group in an online game. At one point, we were getting upwards of a dozen bots a day signing up and plastering spam in every public area they could access. I was the sole admin, so policing it was a pain. I briefly tried a traditional CAPTCHA, but users hated it and it was barely effective when I tuned it to be easier.
I eventually installed a plugin that simply asked users to correctly sort items via dragging into one of two categories before they could register. We wanted to keep it easy for any legitimate users, while making it more difficult for bots or Mechanical Turks, so each prompt relied on the sort of info any player of the game would acquire on their very first day. We figured a few users who didn’t know anything at all about the game might not make it through, but that was viewed as a benefit, not a detriment. Sure enough, we had zero bots from that day forward, never again got a complaint from a new user about the CAPTCHA, and never heard about any issues via external communication channels, though we did get a few compliments.
Given that it cost the 1-2 new users we’d get each month maybe a minute, and only once at that, yes, it was worth it for the many minutes it saved me each and every day.