Tuesday, October 31, 2006

You must be at least this tall to comment



Recently I've been thinking of captchas, those little tests you often have to pass in order to prove to a webserver that you are not a robot. The occasion was a couple weeks back when I inadvertently posted a comment to a blog not realizing that my little one-sentence expression of my opinion was going to lead to invective and ridicule from the blog owner and regulars of that blog, who seemed to be all of a quite distinct way of thinking from mine. If only I'd known that I was expected to conform to a particular standard, I could have saved myself the trouble right at the beginning and found another place to leave my mark.

Traditional captchas are simply to determine whether you are human, a pretty low standard, I think. What about some challenge questions such as these:

  • Type the atomic weight of bismuth

  • Choose the accurate statement: (1) Time has inertia. (2) Iraq was responsible for 9/11. (3) The Jews run Hollywood. (4) Global climate change is far from proven.

  • Which mole do you want to whack?
    Selections have been deleted, see the reason below.



I think it could save a lot of trouble and confusion.

By the way, I am not going to link that blog on which I had that contretemps, sorry!

Update (June 2008): Linkrot at Flickr? Oh well, here is the one of the three images I linked which has not been deleted from the system:

2 comments:

Kelley said...

Ha - that's hilarious!

I've gotten myself in trouble posting on certain blogs, too. Sometimes it appears that someone is asking for an opinion, when actually they are asking you to agree with them, or else. I am really turned-off by people who can't tolerate a civil debate.

Although I do hope the atomic weight quiz doesn't catch on, because I will have to leave the blogosphere.

RichM said...

I wasn't even trying for a debate, I just wanted to make a little tongue-in-cheek comment. Humor is forbidden!

Oh, and Bismuth!