It’s been a few weeks since I shut off captcha on comments here, and things seem to be going OK.
I went for a week or so with comment moderation, but shut that off after a while. I have configured the comments now so that moderation is now only necessary on posts that are 3 or more days old.
For the vast majority of spam comments, the built-in filters that Blogger catches them and sends them down the hole. I haven’t had to get rid of but one or two requests for help cashing a check drawn on an African bank or advertisements for dating sites that specialize in Eastern European left-handed redheads.
Thing is, I can see why everyone hates the new captcha, but to me it’s not that big a deal to post a comment on a blog that still uses them. You see, my handwriting isn’t much better than the font Google is using for captcha, and if I can phonetically say the ‘word’ that is being presented, I can usually type it in. Let’s face it, if you can read the hand-written Russian tax receipt given to a Finnish truck driver by a Ukrainian border guard, you can read “thouck mrabiyn” on a computer screen.
That being said, I think I’ll stay with the no-captcha policy for the time being, at least until Google notices that a lot of people have dropped that feature and corrects the issue.
What say y’all?
DaddyBear’s Den 
bluesun
/ March 14, 2012And there was much rejoicing!
Captcha made me switch to wordpress, so that ought to tell you how I feel about it.
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Six
/ March 14, 2012I turned mine off as well. The spam filter seems to be doing a good job, so far at least. It doesn't bother me either way but as long as I'm not inundated with porn spam that slips past the filters it's all good.
I am looking at WordPress though. I get the idea that Blogger isn't going to fix captcha and with sll the other problems I've had with them they're on a short leash with me.
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North
/ March 14, 2012That's what we all thouck. Mrabiyn too sensitive?
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DaddyBear
/ March 14, 2012Before I leave Blogger, I'd have to ask myself if I want this little hobby to become something more. I take care of systems all day long at work, not sure if I want to continue taking care of one at a hosting company.
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Ruth
/ March 14, 2012yay!
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Shepherd K
/ March 14, 2012I actually ditched word verification and comment moderation before the captcha snafu surfaced. I have had a few spam comments caught by Blogger and one legitimate comment tossed into spam, but otherwise no problems.
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LabRat
/ March 14, 2012If I reproduce bad handwriting inaccurately, the same wiring that lets me more or less read it lets someone understand my bad reproduction. However, computers demand I give them back exactly what they represented.
I wrestle with capcha, but it's not a commenting dealbreaker for me.
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Wilson
/ March 15, 2012Personally I didn’t see the big deal with captcha either. It isn’t that hard for me to read and I might screw it up once every six or eight times. But I went ahead and turned mine off too just because it seems to bother so many. Right now I’m using moderation but will probably turn it off too. I was worried about spam but blogger has caught everyone so far.
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