Hi
The wikipedia's captcha is a great opportunity for getting '''useful'' work done by humans. This is now called a [[game with a purpose]].
I think we can ideally use it to help: * ocr wikisource text like recaptcha does * translate articles fragments using geo-location of editors. Translate [xyz-known] [...] Translate [xyz-new] [...] check using blau metric etc. * get more opinions on spam edits. Is this diff [spam] [good faith edit] [ok] * collect linguistics information on different languages edition. Is XYZ a [verb] / [noun] / [adjective] ... [other] *disambiguate Is [xyz-known] [xyz] ... [xyz] ... [xyz] ... Is [yzx-unknown] [yzx1] ... [yzx1] ... [yzx1] ... Etc....
This way if people feel motivated at cheating at captcha they will end up helping Wikipedia It is up to us to try to balance things out.
I'm pretty sure users will be less annoyed at solving captchas that actually contribute some value.
-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of matanya Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 4:12 PM To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikitech-l] suggestion: replace CAPTCHA with better approaches
As for the last few month the spam rate stewards deal with is raising. I suggest we implement a new mechanism:
Instead of giving the user a CAPTCHA to solve, give him a image from commons and ask him to add a brief description in his own language.
We can give him two images, one with known description, and the other with unknown, after enough users translate the unknown in the same why, we can use it as a verified translation. We base on the known image description to allow the user to create the account.
Is it possible to embed a file from commons in the login page? is it possible to parse the entered text and store it?
benefits:
A) it would be harder for bots to create automated accounts.
B) We will get translations to many languages with little effort from the users signing up.
What do you think?