Just for the record, this is not a matter for my talk page. I don't encourage using my talk page either to circumvent existing prioritization processes, or to try to resolve deeply complex CS questions. ;) Wikitech (or perhaps Phabricator, depending on the team) is a much more appropriate place than any one individual's talk page to try to adjust department or team-level prioritization, especially when it is someone who isn't even in that department. Luis On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 12:34 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Luis Villa Sr. Director of Community Engagement Wikimedia Foundation *Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.*

On 08/19/2015 10:17 PM, Jamison Lofthouse wrote: Unfortunately, we can not use reCAPTCHA because it is proprietary software. I agree this is an important issue. It just isn't resourced right now by the WMF, as far as I know. Matt Flaschen

On 19 August 2015 at 23:06, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Indeed. There have been numerous discussions about the captcha on this mailing list over the past few years, but no progress because this issue just isn't being worked on by anyone. Dan -- Dan Garry Lead Product Manager, Discovery Wikimedia Foundation

Hi, just checking to see if CAPTCHA improvements are likely anytime in the near future. I notice that https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/225/ shows nothing under "Awaiting code review". Is anyone working on this? If not, what kind of nudge would be necessary to get some resources devoted to CAPTCHA improvements? Thanks, Pine On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 6:48 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks. Perhaps some work on CAPTCHA could happen via a Project grant once there is a concrete proposal that's agreeable to the participants and WMF? Pinging Marti to ask about the possibility. Pine On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 10:46 PM, Dan Garry <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Jamison Lofthouse wrote: I should note that the latest reCAPTCHA¹ is actually *less* friendly. ¹ the “please select all images of foobars” version. I don't think it should be considered as the “best solution” (for wikis where it's suitable to install), nor should we repeat their errors. A small list: 1) It still has user assumptions based on 1a) language: the user must understand what a "foobar" is before he can select those², and they aren't always common use words, precisely. 1b) cultural: will the user easily discover all the photos expected to be coffee if that's not a common beverage on his country? ² no, the sample image³ is not enough to discern what they want. At least with the expected easiness. ³ confusing UI btw, since the naive assumption would be to expect you also had to tick it (which is disabled). 2) confusing images: Sometimes it's not clear what is depicted in the photograph. Not even being a human. 3) wrong images: Sometimes there are images that are not really foobars (suppose they are the similar barfoos), and thus *shouldn't* be marked as such. But according to recaptcha they are. (and your grudgingly selection of the barfoo in order to pass the captcha probably means that Google is performing a wrong training reinforcing their idea that it is indeed a foobar) In terms of difficulty for humans I would score them as: images recaptcha > original reCaptcha > door numbers recaptcha > nocaptcha recaptcha