Solstice Coil
Introducing Slauth - our new anti spambot solution
A while back our site started receiving a slew of spambot comments, eventually forcing us to take down the comment option for blog posts. I didn't want to place a regular Captcha solution, and after little sleep and much thought I came up with a new idea. And since every new technology needs a catchy marketing acronym:
introducing Slauth - Sardonic Lore Authentication
So what is Slauth?
Slauth is an anti spambot solution based on sarcasm, pop culture and cognitive deduction. It's meant to differentiate between well meaning humans that honestly just want to post comments and evil spam bots that want you to buy v!a@ra.
How does it work?
The user views an image and is required to complete a sentence\answer a question relating to that image. Since bots don't understand sarcasm, and have never seen Star Wars, their image reading algorithms aren't going to be of much use.
Why is it better than regular Captcha?
First of all, Captcha is annoying. It requires you to enter letters and words that sometimes even as a human you might fail to distinguish. Most importantly, Captcha is not fun. It feels like a chore and gets really frustrating when you don't get it right
Where can I see it in action?
Right here! Try to add a comment to this post.
Since we moved to Drupal, Slauth has been deactivated. It was a fun experiment while it lasted :(
Now for the fun part -
What I need from you is ideas for more images (questions and answers). The question has to be interesting and amusing, while the answer must be unequivocal and not too hard to spell. Just add your idea via a comment to this post. The good ones will get integrated into the system with credit to the contributor. Not only that but - the funniest\wittiest idea will win a free copy of our album!
so go ahead and send your suggestions.
Comments
Hmmmm
Actually, my mom had a deaf friend who always came over to listen to music. It was far out... but it happened.
Vibrations and inferior CAPTCHAs
:)
While I can plausibly (but just plausibly) accept a deaf musician (okay, I'll give you Ludwig Van, but he only got deaf later in life), and just hardly accept a deaf music fan going to a concert for the sake of vibrations, I can't possibly accept the suggestion of an online deaf music fan.
I mean, it's not even that most computer systems lack the appropriate subwoofer system to allow for vibrations to even be felt. This is plain ridiculous.
And as to the vibration thingie - wouldn't they feel much more satisfied sitting on top of a sub hooked to a synthesizer emitting a timed pulse wave at 40hz or so? or, if you'd like to be really adventurous, an arpeggiator feeding a synth sounding a pulse wave at octave 0.
I think that the mathematical question CAPTCHA can work, but you'd have to randomize the numbers, and even then, some hypothetical arch-spammer could write a customized bot that knows where in the page to pull the number from. And the word thingie - if it does not use a database with a random list of questions - is easily penetrable to a brute force / dictionary attack.
Another point that you're totally missing is that, unlike all other CAPTCHA solutions available, this one is supposed to be fun to use. Or, at the very least, bring a smile to the user's face when they are usually accustomed to a horrible decipher-a-list-of-ugly-characters CAPTCHA.
All in all, while this is definitely not the holy grail of accessibility, it is:
1) Better than 95% of the other CAPTCHA solutions available, and,
2) Funny
Sucks to be blind.
Deaf musicians
No, I don't agree with you at all that there's "no point" in making your website or any band website accessible to deaf people. There are deaf musicians, too. Deaf percussionsists, deaf cellists even -- the thing is that not everyone who is deaf can hear absolutely nothing at all, and besides, they can feel vibrations. Deaf people actually go to concerts too, or dance on a dance floor that vibrates to the beat of the music.
That said, when you have very little hearing, an auditory captcha is almost surely an insuperable hurdle, as efficient in keeping you out as a visual captcha is for the blind.
You have a point about colorblind people though - as long as there are sufficient images that don't pose a problem (there are online tools that actually let you test for that). But the fact remains that a visual captcha is extremely efficient at keeping many humans away. That's why they should not be used.
But it really is possible to have effective, valid and accessible anti-bot measures - a visual (or auditory) CAPTCHA is not necessary. A good example is Mike Cherim's accessible contact form - see here: http://green-beast.com/gbcf-v3/ - which works with both visible and invisible anti-bot measures and is very accessible at the same time. Try the demo! (I'm using this form myself.) The techniques can be used in a comment form just as easily.
That's okay - our music is not for the blind
And as to the color blinded - they can just switch images until they find one visible by their inferior eyes.
But seriously, pure HTML CAPTCHA solutions are always penetrable to bots. This is the whole point behind the auditory / visual CAPTCHA.
And you must agree with me that there's really no point to make a band website accessible to deaf people... :)
Oh, boy - yet more inaccessibility
This idea is really stunning in its shortsightedness (pun intended).
What if you can see but are color blind? The most common form of color blindness is an inability to distinguish between red and green. So the picture I see below is going to keep a host of color blind people out as well.
"What color is the different cat?" Different how? I can see it, many can't!
Blind people are human, too
Your "vegetable thingies" captcha may be fun, but I don't think it's "fun" to continue to exclude many humans, just because they cannot see images. Auditive captcha's have a similar problem: people may not have a sound card, or they may have an auditive impairment.
Anti-bot measures don't need to be fun - all they need to do is keep the bots out but let the humans in - all of them! Text-based, standard-HTML-based measures do work and can be quite accessible. So I'm not going to give you ideas for more images - the idea is to use no images at all!
accessibility
the idea is nice, but what about those among us that can not see? they will not be able to interpret the image.
A good CAPTCHA system has an audio option for this, but in your system there is no audio alternative yet.
So did we fix the spam filter or what?
These comments look kinda look spam to me!
marine life
It's dolphin, right?
I like, really neat idea!
very nice
I wasn't going to post, but when I got to the Marine Life image, I had to.
I really, really hope "shark" is the right answer.
Nope. :(
(no subject)
No idea, who is that lady?
(no subject)
Interesting, however the same concept as kitten auth, except your version will confound users who cannot identify "batman" or "star wars".
Slauth also requires definitions based on locale, that will have to be manually entered before they can be used, as opposed to auto-generated character based captchas.
What happens when an ESL, or non-english speaker needs to verify their humanity through Slauth?
fantastic!
This is the best idea in the whole world ever!
"It's funny because it's poisonous!"
I'm afraid most of our users just won't get them. I wouldn't even remember how Fry's dog is called, let alone how to spell it, and while the XKCD ones are indeed amusing, they'll be too obscure to non-XKCD readers...
CAPTCHA Approach
These are a lot better (and funnier) than the random screwed-up alpha-numeric code most sites use.
Here would be more suggestions:
What is the ultimate answer? (spell it out) forty-two
XKCD-related (how I got here):
Place the hyphen in the correct place for the following phrase: "That's a sweet ass car!"
Answer: "That's a sweet ass-car!"
Who is this? (Show picture of Fry's dog, Seymour, as he's lying down in front of the pizza restaurant) They must type out the name "Seymour".
Is this a human or a raptor? (Use Belial's avatar, with the hat) Answer: Human, of course. He's wearing a hat. Only humans wear hats.
(no subject)
Oh how I love Slauth!
Spambots; face its mighty onslauth!
(someone shoot me for a bad pun....)
testing
Angelina Jolie or Tomb Raider, GOD I'M JUST SO CONFUSED!!!@311
Nice!
That's a pretty nice idea to keep spammers at bay.
But woe, you were not counting on non-spambot spammers!
<strong>Buy <a href="http://queasythefish.wordpress.com">VIA@RA REALLY CHEAP</a></strong>
how about
"what's the answer to life, the universe and everything?"
"I put on my robe and Wizard ___"
great idea!
a scene from scarface will be nice.
"say _____ to my little friend"
If you notice the random dots
Each image has a random layer of dots added on top of it. In addition, we're using GD to regenerate the JPEG using a random quality value.
If you look at the IMG element's source, you'll notice that there's no file name visible. This is because the image is dynamically generated for each site visitor.
Combine the two above facts, and you'll realize that it'd take an image recognition algorithm to penetrate this CAPTCHA. Which is much more than we expect the common spammer to employ :)
True, but...
Why would we even want those people writing comments in our website? I think that a minor intelligence test should be mandatory in every site. In access to the internet itself, in fact. If you can't answer a simple question like this - get out of the internet!
Awesome, but...
The problem is if a human goes through each of the images beforehand, the bot can look up the answer to it. Also it will fail with people who don't understand English very well or have been stuck in a cave since 1945.
Nice
Wonder if I got it right with the dolphin.
Brilliant!
Did you register this patent?
test message
So I'm here to try out your better-than-kittens captcha
Slauth
Just testing the captcha, it's neat.
The people commenting about (colour)blind people not being able to work this out forget that most other captcha's in whatever form will never work for them either. Hence some have a link which allows you to ask a mod/siteowner/whoever to get access anyway.
I gotsta try this
This is human spam
(no subject)
I'm currently looking for a nice solution for my site. This is not appropriate for my site, but I am sure getting a kick out if it.
Spambot
Thanks for the idea of Slauth...you rawk.
