1 post tagged “captcha stackoverflow spellcheck”

I've been using the new StackOverflow.com web site a lot.  One of the less attractive "features" there is a CAPTCHA that crops up every so often.  This CAPTCHA is based off reCaptcha, which is a project that pulls problem text from book scanning projects.  It uses words that the scanners couldn't handle for part of the captcha.  It's a great concept:  if the the legitimate scanners were unable to recognize the word, it's likely that attempted cracks will have the same trouble.  Additionally, as a user at least I feel like the annoying captcha has some extra purpose. 

One of my personal character traits is that I nitpick my writing.  I'll probably edit this blog post at least a dozen times after I post it before I move on (9 or 10 of those edits will fix dumb typos).   I therefore hit the StackOverflow captcha fairly often.  That's where it happened; I completed a routine edit, received a captcha prompt, and typed what I saw without thinking.  Except this time what I typed wasn't exactly what the captcha showed.  The captcha had a typo, and I subconsciously entered the word correctly.  I realized my "mistake" a moment after I submitted the response, and mentally braced for the rejection.  But instead of a rejection, the captcha passed. 

Now I have to believe that the captcha requires more than one "opinion" on each snippet before accepting it into the final work.  But I wonder, how often does this happen?  Could this system actually be correcting spelling or typesetting mistakes in old books via some human psychological phenomon?  Probably not: most often the captcha will be entered as shown.  But the possibility is at least intriguing.