captcha's

[pdlethbridge]

It is getting more obvious that we need to make this site less open to the garbage. Could using captcha's help? I've seen it on other sites and it is not an inconvenience.  Please use them here to protect the young ones.

[CNE Runner]

OK 'Pd'...I'll ask the question that is on most readers' minds: What is/are capcha? And to what 'garbage' are you referring?

Thanks,
Ray

Update: I looked up the term on Wikipedia and I still don't know what it has to do with children and this forum...perhaps I am even more obtuse than usual? On the other hand, I learned there is a technical term for all those letters one sometimes has to type when submitting a form on a website.

[pdlethbridge]

I may have the spelling wrong but it is used by sites to screen out computer robots that send spam and porn. On a sign in to a site there is a box with letters placed at different angles that can't be read by a computer

A free  captcha for this site is available here
http://www.captcha.net/

[Jim Banner]

The garbage was a posting that was in an auxiliary font, one not displaying letters and numbers but various other symbols.  It can be from a simpleton mucking about with fonts or it can happen accidentally when font information is corrupted.  In any event, it is unreadable unless you edit it back to a normal font.  Then it may turn out to be legitimate or it may be something that you don't want seen on this site.  You don't see it as it has been dealt with appropriately i.e. it has been deleted.

Jim

[pdlethbridge]

There were high lighted links that were not good, ie, porn

[simkon]

I reported it to the moderator, 2 minutes after it was posted, and i checked one of the links and it went to a pornographic site, which is highly inappropriate, as some of the members are children 12 or 13 years old. And furthermore, I don't think anybody appreciates inappropriate images being linked to this site regardless of age. There really should be something done about this because over the month of August this has happened at least ten times that I can remember. Bachmann Industries has given us this forum to communicate with other model railroaders and enthusiasts, and I feel bad for them because somebody always has to go and ruin the experience for everyone else. There is no place on this site for advertisements, inappropriate images, and any other thing that may be detrimental to someone's experience with this site (i.e. abusive language-but this has not been a problem thankfully). Hopefully Bachmann can move forward and find a way to make sure this is an enjoyable experience for everyone. 

[CNE Runner]

Thanks for explaining the term for me...as well as the excellent illustration. I remember seeing that post with all the 'Martian' symbols; but didn't give it a further thought. It is sad that there are individuals out there who just have to attempt ruination on such a wonderful forum as this one. Maybe 'Pd' is right in saying we need to incorporate captchas in our posting process. Once again, the majority suffers for an immoral minority.

Ray

[BestSnowman]

I would bet the garbled letters were a non-english language. Since there aren't enough ASCII codes (numeric values that map to characters) for all languages if text is rendered with the wrong encoding/font it will just render whatever, if any, character has that ASCII value.

A captcha might not be bad idea for signon or anoymous postings to reduce the spam, especially since a lot of it is not highly inappropriate for the younger users.

[Michigan Railfan]

I reported that as soon as I saw it. I thought it was just someone from a different country "lost in translation." Like they thought this website was for that stuff.

[simkon]

I think it may have been Russian characters because the person or machine who did it was from Russia. 

[Jim Banner]

I would bet the garbled letters were a non-english language.

I think you would lose that bet.  There were things like fractions, symbols, etc. that are used with English as well as other languages.  There was no Greek, no Arabic, no Cyrillic, no Chinese, no Japanese, etc. etc.

While there are only 256 ASCII characters, those same 8 bits of data can be interpreted as whatever symbols (or anything else) as long as we both agree what they will stand for.  Thus non-ASCII fonts can be defined as long as there is a table showing what each value is to be interpreted as.  Next time you are using a word processor, type out something then change the font to Wingdings or wingdings2 or Wingdings3.  This is NOT what we saw on the screen here but it does serve to illustrate non-ASCII fonts.  At least that is my understanding of how ASCII works.

I was unaware that the posting had any links to porn sites.  Unfortunately, clicking on such links may download some undesirable programming as well.

[BestSnowman]

I would bet the garbled letters were a non-english language.

I think you would lose that bet.  There were things like fractions, symbols, etc. that are used with English as well as other languages.  There was no Greek, no Arabic, no Cyrillic, no Chinese, no Japanese, etc. etc.

While there are only 256 ASCII characters, those same 8 bits of data can be interpreted as whatever symbols (or anything else) as long as we both agree what they will stand for.  Thus non-ASCII fonts can be defined as long as there is a table showing what each value is to be interpreted as.  Next time you are using a word processor, type out something then change the font to Wingdings or wingdings2 or Wingdings3.  This is NOT what we saw on the screen here but it does serve to illustrate non-ASCII fonts.  At least that is my understanding of how ASCII works.

I was unaware that the posting had any links to porn sites.  Unfortunately, clicking on such links may download some undesirable programming as well.

I certainly could be wrong but occasionally languages can be displayed that way (which was why I mentioned it), but there situations where languages with alphabets that are vastly different than English can display that way. If the font is strictly ASCII and/or the browser's encoding is set to a non-Unicode* setting and/or the web server is sending data to your browser in a non-Unicode encoding.

If we are unfortunate enough to have similar spam posted to the forum I'll have to save it and see if I can get it to render properly in a Virtual PC I have with a bunch of languages i use for testing localization issues.

*For those that don't know what Unicode is, it is like ASCII but uses 16-bit or 32-bit numbers to represent characters instead of 8-bits vastly increasing the number of available character codes.

[pdlethbridge]

Does it matter what the language is or is the end result what is important? If the end result is porn or spam, do the kids on this site deserve this? Let's get this problem fixed now!

[mabloodhound]

I would hate to see "captcha" become the norm here.   Although it has its place, every post should not require it.
I hope our members continue to moderate any strange posting and report it immediately, which is the best way to keep our forum clean.   
Requiring a "captcha" will only discourage legitimate posts.   Moderators should also be able to permanently block any non legitimate poster.

[CNE Runner]

I have to agree with Dave...using captchas, on every post, would be analogous to using a sledgehammer to drive a brad - overkill. I, for one, will immediately report any abhorrant thread or posting and let the Bach Man handle the rest.

Ray