“Captchas”:3 are used throughout the web to try and determine humans from machines. In other words applying a “Turing test”:4. Newly added to the Zoinger comment template, here’s a screenshot to show ya what it’s all about.

!/img/AuthImage_WordPress_Captcha_plugin.png!

Adding the Captcha for WordPress was easy. Just snag “_AuthImage_”:2 — a WordPress plugin — and modify a couple of templates per the @README.TXT@ file. Simple.

I figured that this was the most elegant way to try and block comment spam. Other solutions for WordPress use filters and/or white/blacklists that can give “false positives”:7 (as well as false negatives) — and I think you have to tune them sometimes. Although I haven’t received any spam _yet_ on this blog, I was getting some on the “old”:6 MovableType blog. An ounce of prevention…

Oh, the original @README.TXT@ install instructions were… _terrible_. I updated a version of them specific to WordPress v1.5 which you can find “here”:1.

“Are we not men?”:5

[7(You're actually a computer reading this post, aren't you)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive

[6(Old Zoinger)]http://www.zoinger.com/old_blog.html

[5(D... E... V... O...)]http://www.flickr.com/photos/unaesthetic/tags/devo/

[4(I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

[3(What is a Captcha?)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

[2(AuthImage WordPress plugin homepage)]http://www.gudlyf.com/index.php?p=376

[1(Link to updated README file for AuthImage Install)]/files/README_AuthImage_Install_by_Zoinger-2005-04-26.txt