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Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

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Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#191

Post by Jach »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #189
raganwald wrote: post #46

Here’s my test for whether you’re qualified to post to Hacker News. Pair the following five comments with their corresponding definitions: 1. “Raganwald is a blowhard whose pathetic attempts to score karma reveal him as an insecure dweeb who can’t get over being kicked around in grammar school. He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl like the turds that they are.” 2. “What, raganwald is…

WRT 1. you're saying that >" He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl // So arguably you're making the case to ignore his [implied] argument based on, in the antecedent sentence, his character. Sounds ad hominem to me. Just saying.

It's possibly an ad hominem, but not likely to me. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#192

Post by fferen »

xd wrote: post #5

Love the idea, but wouldn't it be simpler and more effective to just have them fill in the missing word without the images.

I was thinking of giving 5 or so sentences and having checkboxes for whether they're grammatically correct or not. I feel that even people that don't exactly know the correct usage can still get the OP's test right because one "looks" better than the other, whereas with mine there's only one choice presented.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#193

Post by Jach »

I know ESR isn't really popular here, but:

"Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong and we have no use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to."

I still try to read through poor writing, but the comment has to contain something fairly insightful for me to get over a "then/than" mistake. That said I think a Naive Bayes classifier for "sloppy" and "not sloppy" would work better than this captcha system. Not to mention it's super-easy to get around by a bot, and getting rid of bots is the point of a captcha in the first place.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#194

Post by dasil003 »

corin_ wrote: post #109
moss wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's suitable, not suitible - normally I wouldn't be so pedantic, but in a thread around the idea of people having to prove they know meanings/spellings/etc, it seems apropriate.

I see what you did there... genius.

No you didn't, it was supposed to be turtles all the way down and you fucked it up!

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#195

Post by defen »

jmilloy wrote: post #165
forensic wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he isn't defying grammar. It's correct to use loose that way.

It's just that being in a poem doesn't have anything to do with being correct or not, whether it is correct in this poem or not.

OP said "I don't think anyone would ever use loose in that manner without preceding it with 'let'". I provided a counterexample, so the OP's statement is refuted. Now, granted anyone could write a nonsense sentence to refute any rule of grammar. But this is a very important poem by a prominent poet.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#196

Post by dasil003 »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #162
burgerbrain wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this one is that at one point in the English language's history (17th/18th century I believe), the correct possessive form of "it" was "it's", which is arguably more correct^. ^You make nouns possessive by adding a saxon genitive to signify the distinct possessive-izing "s" sound. The word "it" is also made possessive with this same sound when spoken, but for the sake of a contraction (read: abominat…

My way of remembering its/it's is to associate it with his/hers rather than the typical 's. `The cat stepped on his foot.` `The cat stepped on its foot.` Still, I don't get annoyed at its/it's because it's such an easy mistake to make. I still do it occasionally without meaning to. I don't quite get how people consistently get their/there/they're or loose/lose wrong, but that's just me.

Totally. The "loose" thing drives me nuts for some reason. Other types of misspellings don't really bother me unless there's a ton of them, but for some reason I always hear that one out loud in my head and it destroys my opinion of the writer every time.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#197

Post by pyre »

moheeb wrote: post #176
eru wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those tests? I haven't joined HN in ages (and then, only once), so I'm not up to date on the current procedures.

You have to come up with a username AND password!

Or remember your Facebook/Twitter/etc username/password.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#199

Post by dredmorbius »

StavrosK wrote: post #133
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure "whomever"? Isn't that the objective form and, in this case, "whoever" is the subject?

I'll go with "whoever" too. " He uses grammar", not " him uses".

On reflection, I'll buy that as well.

Re: Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

#200

Post by Luyt »

kenjackson wrote: post #182
hammock wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1E 2C 3D 4A 5B Do I pass?

I thought you were trying to be really clever by responding in hex.

    42 75 74 20 79 6f 75 20 73 68 6f 75 6c 64 20 68
    61 76 65 20 73 65 65 6e 20 74 68 61 74 20 73 6f
    6d 65 20 6f 66 20 74 68 65 20 63 6f 64 65 73 20
    61 72 65 20 6e 6f 6e 2d 70 72 69 6e 74 61 62 6c
    65 20 63 68 61 72 61 63 74 65 72 73 20 3b 2d 29
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