Let's kill the "captcha"

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds it annoying when I run into a "captcha". The purpose is to keep non-human automated spammers from commenting by requiring the reader to type the characters in the "captcha" into the blank. One of the reasons I get annoyed by "captcha" is that the characters are often indecipherable. Take this one for example:

Is this supposed to be "SEB" or "SEr3"? Your guess is probably better than mine.

But at least I don't have to use the option in which the reader clicks the universal icon for handicap - a wheelchair - in order to have the characters audibly read. Have you ever tried to use that option after giving up the attempt to interpret a series of illegible characters in frustration? Here's a video-recorded example of what you might hear:



What's my solution?

I moderate comments. I've been blogging for over 2 years, and I've only run into one spammer in all that time. I simply marked the comment as spam,, and it disappeared in the void. I moderate comments for another reason: I want to be sure that the comments that wind up on my blog aren't overtly rude, hostile, or profane. So since I'd moderate anyway, I much prefer to screen out potential spammers that way.

And I certainly haven't found myself overwhelmed with spam.

What about you? Do you use captcha for your blog? Have you tried simply moderating comments instead? If so, have you found spammers have found a way to wiggle past that and post spam comments anyway? Do you find it annoying when you run into "captcha", or am I just a crabby old lady?

Be careful how you answer that. Remember: I moderate comments!

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