I was deleting hundreds of spam each day on my personal blog - personal blog, nothing that draws traffic from anyone but my circle of family and friends. I had several modules that blocked based on known blacklists, but still I was getting hundreds of automated spam. Installed captcha and now I get something spammy through about once a month.

In a personal situation things are a bit different - no one I know has problems seeing the captcha screen or reading the letters/numbers. And I don’t want to have to worry about needing to approve posts. So it is simple - a couple of seconds for a visitor to decipher the screen and neither of us are bothered by unwanted spam.

Many of them are annoying to read, at best, and impossible to read, at worst.

I hate being forced to fill them out while trying to log in somewhere. I know my username, I know my password, just LET ME LOG IN, right?

Case in point: I had to log in on a specific website I visit. I’ve already told them of my displeasure with the CAPTCHA they added to the login. I knew my name, and my password, but it took me three tries to get the bloody CAPTCHA right! At 14 seconds a pop, that’s three quarters of a minute wasted on a stupid log in form.
(I also have a hateboner with requiring javascript to even log in.)

Also, just by looking at the comments on this post you could say that the average commenter of any worth will take a minimum of 3 - 4 minutes thoughtfully constructing his text. How long does it take to fill out a good captcha system? 5 seconds… if that… Not a great deal of time in the scheme of things.

John - a good cms software will enable the webmaster to comment with out filling out captchas.

There are undoubtedly good and bad captcha systems hence my careful use of the term “good captcha system”. The poorer cousins are a menace - of that I can heartily agree. However, get it right and captchas can be very effective.

I also aggressively monitor my comments, and use blacklisting, word banning etc. There are some words common to spam comments which I don’t want to blacklist, because they might also have legit uses.

I used to hold comments for approval, but I don’t care for the delay that this forces on the conversation. Plus, although it’s a good way to make sure that you reply to comments, it’s ultimately too time consuming.

Readers can sign in to my blog with TypeKey to avoid the CAPTCHAs, but I regard that as only a partial solution. Even though the service has improved, I don’t like that it doesn’t allow the URL link to be specified on a comment post, and it’s still an extra step.

I think the best solution will come from 3rd party identity verifiers eventually. You’ll sign in when you get online, and your verified ID will be used to mark you as a person. Sure, that system can be gamed also, but I think it shows promise.

Two points in favor of CAPTCHAs:

1. Since I have a comments feed, I feel very strongly that I need to do everything I can to save my readers from spam comments.

2. Sometimes, that extra step before posting a comment gives a reader just an extra moment to think about whether they really want to go on record with their comment. Also, it provides a moment to think about whether you’ve said all you need to say. I never use the “preview” feature of comments, but I have edited comments I was leaving to either include or delete part of the comment when I noticed something in the preview that usually comes up along with a CAPTCHA.

One point against:

I hate having to fill out the CAPTCHA myself when I leave a comment in response on my own blogs! I try to respond to most comments, so I end up having to fill out a lot more CAPTCHAs than I would if I were just commenting elsewhere!

Obviously if you’re worried about false positives then it will take a bit longer to scan the marked comments but even then you can scroll through them pretty quickly. I don’t bother, and it’s only bitten me once, thanks to a reader whose username was a common online card game.

As for forums, I think they are ok for sign up forms. That’s a one time thing, as opposed to posting on forums which is a more frequent thing, like commenting on blogs. So capthca’s for forum sign ups is ok, just not for every forum post.

Well formed captchas are easy for all but the seriously visually impaired. Sound based captchas are also available.

Umm, I’m signed up to a spam database for email. But as you point out spammers aren’t stupid, they soon create workarounds. I’d be interested to see how labour intensive Akismet really is? Going by some accounts - very!

Comment analysis programs are all very well but they have plenty of weaknesses that bots can exploit. Trust me, you can get yourself into a real lather trying to plug all the holes.

Whitelisting and blacklisting can be very helpful in resolving minor spam issues and very handy for blocking malicious or persistent offenders.

In summary, I struggle to see why you would put yourself to all this extra effort when a captcha very efficiently takes care of all but the most sophisticated and persistent spammers.

By the way - if you’re highlighting time as an issue then really anybody who as anything worth saying will not begrudge a few seconds tapping out a captcha.

Interesting debate.