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 <[log in to unmask]> 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