[WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

[Mark Gallagher]

G'day Steve,

> On 3/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> wrote:
> 
>> You need to approach Wikipedia in good faith, and the best way to 
>> establish that faith is to browse with Firefox.  It's the choice of
>> Phil Welch, Mark Gallagher, and Willy on Wheels!
>> 
>> Firefox!  It's what's for dinner.
> 
> 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.

> 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?  People on poor 
connections?  People in a work environment that enforces "no image 
browsing"?

Now, it may well be that we *need* to use captchas and other things that 
break in browsing environments other than 
the-best-browser-on-the-most-modern-OSes.  But tt's one thing to say 
"gee, we're sorry you can't register an account, but we have no choice, 
because of vandals and that", and another entirely to say "get a better 
browser and stop being difficult, you jerk".


Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


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