12-31-2015, 02:23 PM
In my ongoing attempts to keep spammers from annoying us, I've been tweaking the registration process some. I think that I may have it back under control as it is, but I am considering one last tweak.
When you register for the site, you have to answer a security question that is meant to weed out the "bots." The default one provided by the software is "What is 2+2?" Spammers have figured out how to write their code to figure out most of the rudimentary ones like that, so I've been using for a long time "What are the initials of this website?" It has worked pretty well, I think, but it does not stop the (far fewer) non-bot spammers who are registering manually.
So I was thinking of going to some variant of this (probably using easier numbers): "What is the current yield of a stock that costs $25 per share and pays an annual dividend of $1 per share?"
Do you think that's too mean? Or too hard for someone that is genuinely interested in our conversations but that may not have a good understanding of the fundamentals? Or would you expect that anyone genuinely wanting to participate on the site should be able to answer something like that? The goal is to let anyone with a genuine interest register without too much trouble, but make it hard for both human and bot spammers.
When you register for the site, you have to answer a security question that is meant to weed out the "bots." The default one provided by the software is "What is 2+2?" Spammers have figured out how to write their code to figure out most of the rudimentary ones like that, so I've been using for a long time "What are the initials of this website?" It has worked pretty well, I think, but it does not stop the (far fewer) non-bot spammers who are registering manually.
So I was thinking of going to some variant of this (probably using easier numbers): "What is the current yield of a stock that costs $25 per share and pays an annual dividend of $1 per share?"
Do you think that's too mean? Or too hard for someone that is genuinely interested in our conversations but that may not have a good understanding of the fundamentals? Or would you expect that anyone genuinely wanting to participate on the site should be able to answer something like that? The goal is to let anyone with a genuine interest register without too much trouble, but make it hard for both human and bot spammers.
