[Radiant] Commentable and Spam

[Nolan Darilek]

On Sep 6, 2006, at 12:12 PM, Sean Cribbs wrote:

> One user, "Nolan", commented that CAPTCHA images are inaccessible (to
> vision-impaired users) and should not be considered an option.  As an
> alternative, he suggested the use of spam-filtering services like  
> Akismet.

It isn't that I think it shouldn't be an option, but that it  
shouldn't be the *only* and *default* option, because if it is then  
it gets enabled without users thinking through the implications. And,  
admittedly, the implications aren't major for the average user, but I  
promise you that anyone in my physical proximity when I can't leave a  
comment or join a forum isn't quick to forget them when they've heard  
me curse up a storm because I can't. :) I worry that if CAPTCHA is  
the only and default scheme, or even if it is the first scheme that  
takes hold for any early adopters, that Radiant will become  
exclusionary to those of us who want to comment but can't.

Another option might be to fix the captcha gem to include the textual  
challenge/response discussed below, or maybe to pipe its text/numbers  
to festival. It'd be clunky, but CAPTCHA itself is a rather clunky  
solution IMHO. I'm even pondering writing a web service that accepts  
CAPTCHA images and farms decoding them out to volunteers via RSS, and  
not being particular about whether the one requesting the text is an  
innocent user or a spammer, I'm just *that* annoyed with the tactic  
and its use by companies like Yahoo who, when I last checked, insist  
that VI users provide contact information not requested from sighted  
users. Sorry, I don't want to be contacted by someone for permission  
to join a group or del.icio.us or whatever.

Ahem, sorry, I'm ranting. :) I'm just eager not to see any more web  
developers go down this road.