[WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

Philip Welch wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2006, at 1:41 AM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
> 
> 
>>>A little uncalled for? Especially when you're asking someone to go to
>>> a significant amount of additional effort to support a feature which
>>> is probably required by very few people?
>>
>>No.  There are legitimate reasons for people to browse without  
>>images on
>>(being blind is a rather good one), and blaming the victim of our own
>>carelessness is *not* appropriate.
> 
> 
> There is a vast minority of people who can *never* browse with images  
> on.
> 
> 
>>>Now, I'm not clear on whether this Captcha is displayed every time
>>>you make any contribution, or only when registering an account, but
>>>if it's the latter, then it seems almost *everyone* could manage to
>>>get images to display once for the purpose. Blind people aside, of
>>>course.
>>
>>People on old computers that can only run Lynx?
> 
> 
> It's 2006. There are adolescents younger than "old computers that can  
> only run Lynx". People who do not upgrade their computers for twelve  
> years are not likely Wikipedia contributors. If you have an  
> idiosyncratic preference for 1980's-era technology, don't expect us  
> to indulge it--especially not at the cost of developer time and  
> effort that can be used to benefit the Wikipedia in far better ways.
> 
> CLI fanatics who prefer to only run Lynx are probably a bigger  
> constituency, but even that is an idiosyncratic preference we can't  
> be expected to indulge.
> 
> 
>>People on poor connections?
> 
> 
> A Wikipedia captcha page presumably loads two images: the Wikipedia  
> logo and the captcha itself. Perfectly feasible, if sluggish, on 28.8  
> dialup. If your connection is slower than that, you probably wouldn't  
> be contributing anyway.
> 
<snip>

I've been forced to use Lynx over sluggish SSH tunnels before. With
image-only captchas I'd be locked out in the cold, dark and wet.

If you've actually bothered to read [[CAPTCHA]], you'll realise that
they're a pain in the arse, you insensitive clod.

-- 
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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