The Empire State Building question (height) and other similar questions are unnecessary. You don't need to make them hard for humans, just for bots. "What is the sum of 1+1" keeps bots out just as easily, and new registrants won't get [Censored] trying to find the height of the building, trying decimal places etc.
I used "1+1" on my popular phpBB forum for over a year and it was completely successful.
Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
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instamattic
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:45 pm
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refulgentis
- Bright Spark User
- Posts: 342
- Joined: Mon Apr 14, 2008 5:08 am
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
Why not? It confirms that the people registering here are, at least on a basic level, capable of looking up reference information which saves a lot of support time.instamattic wrote: You don't need to make them hard for humans, just for bots.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
Here here!refulgentis wrote:Why not? It confirms that the people registering here are, at least on a basic level, capable of looking up reference information which saves a lot of support time.instamattic wrote: You don't need to make them hard for humans, just for bots.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
It should ask tough video transcoding related questions that force people to read handbrake's documentation first 
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
... or something simple and pertinent, like for starters "give the location of the individual encode logs for x platform" . Now that would prove that at least we can get an activity log.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
Can we extend this challenge to be able to download a copy of Handbrake as well? Or better yet, the installer will not complete unless you answer the question. Would probably cut down a significant amount of noise on the forums... 
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
Make it a two question format, the first question being shown a sample activity log along with a hypothetical problem, and the user must make a sample post requesting assistance. The second question should be a trick question to really weed them out. Something like 'Handbrake doesn't encode as fast as you think it should. Do you a)post a thread demanding the developers stay up day and night to somehow streamline code to meet some arbitrary expectation b)Demand the developers add support for an OpenCL based accelerator, and comment about how a free program should have this, or c)use the queue and go to bed? A and B get your IP address banned for life, and C moves you on to the next step. Just an idea.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
Da Man: as usual a colorful interpretation of the problem.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
A twisted ray of sunshine in an otherwise drab day, perhaps?
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
i agree with the original post, it took me several minutes of google/wikipedia/etc to find an answer, absolutely pointless and quite frustrating.
Re: Spam registration challenge does not need to be difficult
This is the kind of thing that would keep me from even bothering with a forum.... 