Ad Based Captcha?

[Bagged Milk]

well, I have most of these ads, AND an actually pretty nifty popup thingy that says play Mass Effect 2 or Dead Space 2, but they are really nifty because you can play the demo of them in the window instantly. without downloading it. I am fascinated by this technology.

but I've only seen like 3 captchas on this forum soo, I don't really know.

 

[Racecarlock]

Next thing you know the reply button will have a coca cola background or something.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Seems like a natural progression to me...for ad revenue.

I saw maybe one or two Bot Threads on the site during the first 9 months I was here, then they implemented Captcha to combat the, er, "threat" (I frequent the Gaming, News Room, and Off Topic almost exclusively, was botting really that bad elsewhere?).

But now we have annoying spot-advertisements strapped to them, which creates a consistency THAT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF HAVING CAPTCHAS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I must ask, what is the point in creating a random Honey-Pot for automated scripts when you remove the random part of the Honey-Pot? A botter could watch all the adverts, get the requisite list of catch-phrases for each, parse them and bypass the Captcha entirely.

It's hard for me to not be jaded about this, because from my perspective, it appears that they implemented an anti-bot system to fight a bot threat that didn't really exist so that they could lull users into using it and then drop more ads via the new anti-bot system.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I don't really mind it all that much. I mean, they need to support the site or else we can't post here at all. And as far as means to support the site go, it's really pretty harmless. Not to mention it cuts down on spammers. At least with the new system we're less likely to get random symbols and Chinese characters, so that's a small silver lining I suppose.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've suddenly gotten an inexplicable urge to go renew my X-Box Live subscription.

 

[Disaster Button]

I've never seen these captchas yet but none of the other advertisements bother me. Except for the ones that talk or pop up in the bottom right of the screen, but even then its just a momentary annoyance and nothing huge.

 

[Lenin211]

They needed a way to make us watch ads when posting. Currently they only make us watch ads when we open videos, look at ads surrounding the video, look at banner ads all over the site and make us close large popup ads that cover half the screen. Its only reasonable that they would want to fill the entire site with advertisements, they are just moving on to the forums. Maybe next our avatars will all have to be ads.

 

[Amishdemon]

What capcha ad? (trying to activate it)

 

[GeorgW]

Well, if they're gonna have captchas, why not make money on them? Seriously.
Are they hard to read or something, is that the problem? I don't get captchas cuz of pubclub.

 

[Broady Brio]

I don't actually get any ads on The Escapist, thanks to some help from AdBlock Plus and NoScript. Not even the video ads before what I actually want to watch. And the only Captchas I've ever gotten were the standard ones.

Oh dear... You just got one ticket to moderation.

OT: I've noticed these new captchas, but I guess it makes sense from their perspective, making money and all that jazz.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Video ad ones? Shit, that sounds horrendous. Haven't gotten any yet, though.

I think captcha should be a picture of something (a house, a dog, etc) and there's multiple choice as to what it is. Get it right, you aren't a robot, go ahead and post.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

I love the new recaptcha! At least I can friggin READ it.
The previous ones where very hard for me to make out.

Also I have seen no ads in the new ones yet.
The previous one was "Carbon footprint".
A clever ad to use more gasoline?

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

With traditional capchas, at least you're helping them make digital books, or something.

Wait what? Explain please, how does presenting me with text that is all blurry and weird make a book?

Well, its just recapcha, so I suppose I just misspoke there. But this is what I mean: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

And yes, now I'm seeing them. This is severely unpleasant.

Checked with an alternate account. How very annoying >.<

*declines to plug the pub club lest flamers flame*

The tech team is trying out this new captcha system because recaptcha reportedly likes Greek and mathematics more than English but it didn't add another layer of ads. I guess that's what it will come down to. Will more people complain about this new captcha/ad system than they did about recaptcha? Is it worth impossible to type captchas in order to get rid of another spot for ads? I don't know.

 

[LaBarnes]

Honestly I prefer recaptcha, doubly so now with the knowledge that it serves a purpose.

My issue has never been with the difficulty of captcha(seriously, if you can't read recaptcha text, get your eyes checked), but with the fact that they are deliberately handicapping the site. Honestly, if they want people to join the pub club that bad, just make it a pay-only site for God's sake. Pay-only is an equally shitty business model when compared to "free but made of fail and AIDS."

 

[evilneko]

I joined just yesterday, and have seen the video captcha I think 3 times so far. So obviously, it's not on every post and actually I've not seen it at all today, maybe I joined at the tail end of a very brief trial.

I have never watched the video. There is a button to click to cycle types of captcha. Eventually it'll give you an easy to read text captcha.

I think Escapist should look into the ad networks used by the Nexus modding sites rather than foisting ads upon the forums.

 

[Erana]

With traditional capchas, at least you're helping them make digital books, or something.

Wait what? Explain please, how does presenting me with text that is all blurry and weird make a book?

Well, its just recapcha, so I suppose I just misspoke there. But this is what I mean: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

And yes, now I'm seeing them. This is severely unpleasant.

Checked with an alternate account. How very annoying >.<

*declines to plug the pub club lest flamers flame*

I still think that if Pub Club members are exempt from Capchas on the logic that "Spammers don't pay for their accounts," Former pub Club members should also be exempt, because they have proven they aren't going to spam.

Of course, making it into ad revenue might change things a bit...


Still, if you don't want to watch the video, you can cycle through the formats from audio to text-format advert capchas by one of the buttons on the right side of the box.

 

[Brandon237]

I don't understand? Are different regions getting different ads? I get a video ad after every video and there are banners, but mostly for the already on site stuff and a few for other stuff, but nothing what you are talking about. Can someone explain?

Same, in fact my friend was commenting on the excellent lay-out and ad-display on the Escapist earlier today. Mentioning how the ads managed to fit in well with the page, were not visually offensive or ugly and even on the videos were very bearable. I agree, I am not pub-club, so I'm just very happy to have a good forum like this to post on. I would not use ad-blockers here simply because the ads are decently integrated for me...

Also new captcha... it is READABLE... And I no longer get complex equations with Greek symbols at a slant of 70 degrees... for both bloody words!