Arrrgh!

Dear doctor,

I did very well in school all the way through college and I have a few diplomas to prove it. I’ve been successfully employed since I was 16 in various challenging jobs. I don’t suffer from ADD and I am not dyslexic.

So why, oh why do I keep failing at those frustrating word and characters verification tests when I’m trying to post a comment?

Arrrgh!

God, I hate these things. I know I am not alone.

By Martine

Screenwriter / scénariste-conceptrice

14 comments

  2. I HATE them! They make me feel stupid, like I’m failing at the baby « put the triangle shape in the triangle hole » game. Grrrr…

  3. And if you’d like to put a name to your foe they’re called CAPTCHAs. Which stands for « Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart » …nope, I’m not making this up.

    I can’t stand them either, besides being a barrier to accessibility they make me want to throw rocks at the screen everytime I get one wrong.

  4. You are not alone, Martine. This is really bad human factors.

    For one, it should never be our readers responsibility to prove they are human and not spam bots. Second, if it must be done, it should be creative, easy, and fun.

    For a while, on my blog I had Farside icon that was displayed. All the reader had to do was find the matching icon, fill in their details and comment. To top it off, it only had to be done once if « cookies » were turned on.

    Now WordPress has Akismet which pretty much does all the work behind the scenes alleviating the readers from unnecessary complications.

    So, essentially CAPTCHAs are pure shite and should never have been implemented in the first place. I’m doubly shocked that Google owned Blogger uses it too. Isn’t Google about usability?

  8. hmmm… have you ever considered that you are in fact a robot, and this is the only way you’ve ever realized it up to now?

  11. Five Blue,

    That reminds me of a scene from See No Evil, Hear No Evil where Richard Pryor plays a blind man. While riding the bus his sister tells him he’s not white and Pryor replies, « I’m not white?! Oh my god I’m not white?! Does dad know? »

    Cracks me up every time.

  12. I easily mess up four out of five of those, sometimes more. But, I’m slightly dyslexic so it’s to be expected. I do like it when they accidentally spell out dirty or serendipitous words… gives me Matrix’ish goosebumps.

  14. En plus, ces choses que tu hais, ont la propri�t� d’�tre innaccessibles pour les utilisateurs aveugles.

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