I don’t understand the word verification system that operates when you want to post a comment on a blog. I suppose it’s to stop some sort of crazy cyber-criminal who wants to post all sorts of wild comments and attribute them to you, but I don’t quite get the point. If I can see those letters and re-type them, why can’t he? And also, what’s up with the crazy fonts and strange morphed letters? How does that stop these comment thieves? I spend a lot of time getting word verification wrong. Is that a B or an H? Is that an I or the side of the N? I often must try two or three times. Then I wonder- why am I not being stopped by the cyber-robocops? I’m obviously not fit to leave comments if I can’t figure out these simple letters. I must be some sort of suspect person.And yet eventually I'm allowed to leave my comment. I wonder what the cut off is. If you miss 10 times you're out? 20?
I also spend a fair amount of time trying to sound out and find meaning for the nonsense word verification words. Terackcb-hmm…sounds a bit dinosaur-y to me. How would you pronounce it? Or a great one today- Womiser. I think I might start incorporating that one into my writing. Such a wide array of meanings for that. A good insult perhaps- “You’re just a stupid womiser anyway!” Or it might be a tool, like for getting the cheese out of the holes in the cheese grater- “Hey, hand me the womiser; this cheddar is very stubborn”.
I guess, in the end, even if it doesn’t stop infiltrators of the world of comments, at least it increases my vocabulary.
8 comments:
I totally feel your pain. Actually the word verification deal (like you have on yours) isn't made up of words at all, but random squiggly letters designed to stop robo programs from posting spam comments. It helps a little if you increase the font size - you can see the letters better. Even then, I sometimes get it wrong.
No squiggly letters to decipher on my blog though. Yay! And so far, I've not been spammed. Hope I didn't just jinx myself.
Actually, I believe there are some folk who send out mass spam comments via some dort of techno whiz cyber robot womizer. However, it is a well known fact that womizers cannot read word verification gibberish. They would never that they were supposed to type "dinge" before their comment can be posted.
I LOVE the W.V.s on Squidoo. They take a vast array of simple words and combine them oddly like "squidballs" or elbowknobs".
Ooops. I left a word out of my post. Please add the word "know" in the appropriate spot.
I am such a womizer!
I think someone should make a weekly writing prompt (like Search Engine Fiction) for WV words. I could really be motivated by a word like squidball, or elbowknobs (!)- my gosh I might even win a prize with a story on elbowknobs.
I've struggled the whole week with SEF's candle in the mist (in my world, candles are never in the mist- I live on the edge of a desert), perhaps I'll bunk it and do elbowknob. Or would that be an act of total womization?
I realised after going back to the post that I used the American spelling for womiser. The international nature of the blog makes things very confusing. I've checked with an editor friend of mine (me) and she says that either spelling is correct:
WOMIZER
WOMISER
yup - groovy is right, WV is entirely to keep bots from filling your comments with links - sometimes thousands of them in a single comment post, and bots can do zillions of posts at a time...it boggles the mind that anyone ever clicks on such links, but I just read that something like 0.2% of all spam gets a response, so you can imagine how much of it goes out if that tiny amount makes it profitable...
and I love the idea of a doing prompts based on WV characters!
Ditto! I've been on sites, where it took me five minutes to finally get one right.
P.S. I really liked this passage from your "The Dandelion Wishers,"Thinking again I wonder when is the right time to speak about the things that have profoundly changed our lives, the purely truthful events, if not now, minutes before death?"
You know what's worse, EPTAS,trying to view those WVs on a black and white screen. My other computer's monitor died about a year ago and I was struggling along in black and white. It would take me forever to get into make comments.
Thanks for your kind comment about Dandelion Wishers.
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