Captchas implemented for new account registration and anonymous comment posting

Unfortunately, Otaku no Podcast has been hit with a rash of spambot attacks. Fortunately the wonderful Akismet plugin has caught most of the spam comments, but the site has been hit with a rash of new account creations that appear to be spammers. In an attempt to prevent future problems, I have implemented captchas – those little graphics phrases that you have to type – for all new account creations and anonymous posts.

I’m using the reCAPTCHA system to handle these. This system, run by the folks at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, has the added benefit of helping develop OCR (optical character recognition) technology. It’s really cool, and they have a great page on their website that explains how it works. (It’s also accessible to the disabled – if you are unable to read the captcha, an audio captcha is presented; and in this case, you are actually helping to improve computer-based recognition of speech, by listening to snippets from old-time radio shows and identifying the words that were spoken. Again, really cool stuff.)

Sorry for the (IMHO minor) inconvenience this may cause to you, but I am doing this to keep the site spam-free, which I am sure you will agree is a worthwhile goal.