Textpattern Gem: ReCaptcha

I love blogs. I love setting them up. I especially love to see a blog I’ve setup for someone get used. About the only thing I really don’t love about blogs is the comment spam. To get 4 or 5 emails with the same generic spam is just annoying…and my friend Garret agrees. So when he called me for help in adding some stricter monitoring of comments for his blog, I was delighted to find reCAPTCHA.

reCAPTCHA is a free service that takes CAPTCHA one step further. If you’re not familiar with a CAPTCHA, it’s a program that helps control the amount of spam received through web forms by generating tests that humans, but not computers, can pass. For example, when you visit a blog to comment and you are asked to type out a set of words, numbers, or phrase in order to submit your comment, that is a CAPTCHA.

What makes reCAPTCHA different is that they are using these web forms to help digitize material like books, newspapers and radio shows. By having humans process words that current computers find difficult reading, they are processing internet archives and old editions of the New York Times, for starters. I think this is one of the neatest ideas I’ve heard all week.

Check out this ScienCentral video explaining reCAPTCHA:

They have application plugins for WordPress, Movable Type, and Joomla among several others. Go check them out!

Have any other spam control plug-ins or addons I should consider? Let me know below!