A Word About Word Verification

Do you have word verification for comments enabled on your blog? Why? Perhaps you know exactly why, to keep that automated spam off your site right? If you're anything like I was though, you don't exactly know why. You read somewhere it would keep spam off your site and it was a good thing to do, so you did it too. Well, if everyone else jumped off the roof...

Word verification has been at best, an annoyance and at worst, the bane of my existence when visiting other sites. Word verification comes in many different types as well. There's the type of word verification that consists of letters so squiggly that you have to be on acid to read them clearly (found a lot here on dear, old Blogger); there's the type that consists of normal words with a big line through them so that you sometimes have to guess what the word is (you're always wrong though); there's the type that consists of words in type so tiny that you need to use an ultra power magnifying glass to see it in the first place; and my personal favorite, the type that require you do a math problem to verify your humanity! Let me tell you if math is what verifies I'm human, then color me robot!

I had word verification enabled too, I didn't want that spam on my site. Mind you, I didn't really know what that would mean but my mind reeled with the possibilities! So...I turned the word verification on and went merrily on my way.

I had it turned on until a friend asked on her blog if people who didn't require it, would please turn it off. It seems that my friend has arthritis and typing in itself is difficult sometimes, but add in the word verification and what is difficult becomes impossible. I thought about her request; I hated word verification, and I too, sometimes found it so difficult to use I just gave up and didn't leave a comment at all.

So I turned it off; that was about two months ago and you know what happened? I got a spam comment! That's right, one comment and I promptly deleted it. I don't know if my comments have increased since I disabled it but it sort of seems so.

So here's my two cents if you care; if you know for sure your site is subject to a lot of spam that you can't deal with, then by all means enable word verification. If you don't know for sure that's the case; don't make your readers jump through hoops to leave you a comment. Just my two cents.


"Funniest word verification entry." That could be another word for poop. (from CollegeHumor)