Comments on: Understanding reCAPTCHA http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/ Covering the intersection of digital technology and research, teaching, and learning in the humanities, including search, data mining, website development and design, and programming. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:00:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog » Blog Archive » A reCAPTCHA Dilemma? http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/comment-page-1/#comment-920 Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog » Blog Archive » A reCAPTCHA Dilemma? Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:32:27 +0000 http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/#comment-920 [...] the New York Times’s ethicist, Randy Cohen (no relation to your’s truly). I have been a major proponent of reCAPTCHA, the red and yellow box at the bottom of my blog posts that uses words from books [...] [...] the New York Times’s ethicist, Randy Cohen (no relation to your’s truly). I have been a major proponent of reCAPTCHA, the red and yellow box at the bottom of my blog posts that uses words from books [...]

]]> By: Trey Mitchell http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/comment-page-1/#comment-162 Trey Mitchell Tue, 21 Aug 2007 12:57:21 +0000 http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/#comment-162 I started using reCAPTCHA on a site to stop form spam and it seems to be working well. Unfortunately I don't think it will work better than other CAPTCHA systems just because it includes a word a machine has already had trouble with. My understanding is that reCAPTCHA gives the user two words, one it has already deciphered (which serves as the true turing test) and one that it hasn't deciphered. The system then uses the input from the commenter to "learn" what the un-deciphered word is. So I don't think reCAPTCHA is any more impervious to OCR hacks than other CAPTCHA systems. I started using reCAPTCHA on a site to stop form spam and it seems to be working well.

Unfortunately I don’t think it will work better than other CAPTCHA systems just because it includes a word a machine has already had trouble with.

My understanding is that reCAPTCHA gives the user two words, one it has already deciphered (which serves as the true turing test) and one that it hasn’t deciphered. The system then uses the input from the commenter to “learn” what the un-deciphered word is.

So I don’t think reCAPTCHA is any more impervious to OCR hacks than other CAPTCHA systems.

]]> By: Jordan http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/comment-page-1/#comment-91 Jordan Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:06:27 +0000 http://www.dancohen.org/2007/08/17/understanding-recaptcha/#comment-91 Your post brings to mind translation projects that proceed in a sort of Wiki format...individual phrases or sentences that can be translated by an individual user, on a voluntary basis. These large sorts of translation projects, especially of languages like Latin, seem to require the human touch, but breaking up the work into much smaller "bits" spreads out the labor. Maybe these aren't as useful or consistent as the work of a single translator or team, but an interesting option, nonetheless. Your post brings to mind translation projects that proceed in a sort of Wiki format…individual phrases or sentences that can be translated by an individual user, on a voluntary basis. These large sorts of translation projects, especially of languages like Latin, seem to require the human touch, but breaking up the work into much smaller “bits” spreads out the labor.

Maybe these aren’t as useful or consistent as the work of a single translator or team, but an interesting option, nonetheless.

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