On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 8:42 AM, Denny Vrandečić < denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de> wrote:
Wait - removing the captchas lead to a decrease of reverted edits in terms of absolute numbers? Woot? Anyone has an explanation for that?
I think the explanation is pretty clear from the numbers Nemo shared. This CAPTCHA was annoying as hell, and was directed not just at people adding links or hitting some kind of AbuseFilter, but everyone who was editing anonymously or with a new account. It was literally throwing the baby out with the bath water.
As someone who had to experience that CAPTCHA as a new user on ptwiki last year, I am not surprised at all that we attracted many more positive contributions just by removing it. Sadly, from looking at bug 49860 and gerrit change 69982, it seems that this deeply annoying feature is going to be put back in place.