Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Captchas and non-English speakers - Wikiml-l

5 Feb 2011

" *Should we not have  ...Malayalam-based (there is a lot of talk nowadays
in having Wikipedia growing in India), etc. captchas ?* "

Looks like Malayalam Wikipedia creating lots of buzz in the global Wikipedia
movement :D

- Tinu Cherian

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Teofilo &lt;teofilowiki(a)gmail.com&gt;
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 9:27 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Captchas and non-English speakers
To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org

I've just opened a new account on the Danish Wikipedia.

I was asked to read the following Captcha :

http://da.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciel:Captcha/image&wpCaptc…

I provided the following answer : "shipsneeds" and it was accepted.
But I must confess that reading the second "e" and the "d" was
difficult for me.

I was anguished, because I feared that if I answered a wrong answer, I
would not be given a second chance for some time.

I don't see why both "e"s should have a different look. Because they
looked different, I was puzzled during a long time before eventually
choosing to type a second "e". The vertical bar of the "d" being
extremely short in comparison with that of the "h" and that of the
"p", I was wondering if the last character could not be a square
looking "o" or a manual script "a".

I had all these difficulties although I am among the advanced readers
and speakers of English. I Know that "ee" is an often found character
combination in English. I could also recognize the words "ships" and
"needs".

What about non-English speakers ?

Should we not have Japanese-based, Malayalam-based (there is a lot of
talk nowadays in having Wikipedia growing in India), etc. captchas ?

For the time being, while the captcha is English-based, how about
adding a button with "let me try another captcha" for people
experiencing a captcha that is very difficult to read ?

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