Topic: Roman Numerals

[-<WillyP>-]

I wanted to sign up on a forum and they had an anti spam question, which you have to answer to complete the registration.  This is the question:

Triple 1I and then add X (roman)

I've tried everything I can think of, nothing works.
Mmmm, les see, triple 1I, I guess means 3, add ten should be 13... nope.
Maybe they want XIII... nope. Or even IIIX, or 7, or VII? Ok, I give up, anyone have a clue?

[(LL)Atan]

I=1
V=5
X=10
L=50
C=100
D=500
M=1000

3*11 + 10 ?
or
3*1 + 10 ?
or
33 + 10?

[Foil]

3*11 + 10 ?

^^^ This.

[Kaiaatzl]

This is anti-spam going into the realm of elitism... or just plain ridiculousness.

[VANGUARD]

that must be some forum you're entering.
you figured it out foil?
anyone who knows must love math.

[karx-elf-erx]

For me first question is what is meant with "1I"? I mean, mixing Arab and Roman numerals?

[-<WillyP>-]

Well, that is what got me!

43 was the answer, gee, I thought I tried that, I guess not.

And 'some forum' is a support forum for PunBB. 

Thanks for the help!

[VANGUARD]

certainly looks like Atan was pretty well dead on, one of his answers being right; and foil pinpointed it.

nothing personal, but if I had to do that for this site, you wouldn't see me here.  

[-<WillyP>-]

No, that wouldn't fly, I agree.  I was thinking of using Punbb on a site as a lightweight forum, doesn't need much in the way of features but needs to be easy to use.  There are much better ways of blocking spammers than that.

It looks like the forum for Punbb is dying (questions don't get a quick response), then I noticed there is a fork which seems to have a bit more life in it.  Maybe I will use that instead.

[-<WillyP>-]

Well they never sent me the confirmation e-mail so I never got on the forum anyway... 

Dealing with spammers sucks big time but there are better ways to deal with it than making it so difficult for legitimate users... Kinda pointless to have a support forum then lock everybody out, because you didn't bother with any usability test.  We've got half a dozen plugins for spammers here and none are visible to legitimize users except the captcha.

Ok, rant over,    Thanks again for the help! 

[VANGUARD]

correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't spammers just some sort of automated deal? You might as well say 5 + 3 =

[SaladBadger]

The problem is that a witty bot might be able to pick up that it's asking for a simple math question. It's hard to get a perfect balance of simplicity and effectiveness. (though I've seem some that have achieved a balance, but they are very specific to their forum and cannot be applied to all situations)

[-<WillyP>-]

Vangaurd is right that a simple question should work.  However many spammers use a combination of automated bot and human captcha-solver.  The bot fills out most of the form then sends the captcha image image to a human in some third world country who earns money solving captchas.  If simple math questions became common, the spammers would likely send them to the humans also.  This, I would think would be easy to detect, and deny registration, but I don't know, I'm not a coder.

Just think, could be a win-win situation... Think of all those poor third world kids who are earning wages, while at the same time learning math and engrish skilz!   

[Foil]

A good one I've seen is the DBB.com.  Theirs simply says "It's on the image on the front page".  Go look at the image (an animated gif), and it's perfectly clear.  That's plenty to baffle nearly any bot out there.

[-<WillyP>-]

Actually it's flash, but I agree, it likely would fool any bot, and probably most human captcha-crackers would not want to spend the time.  That's very much like what I had in mind, ask a question that requires someone to look at the front page for the answer.

Of course, it would also defeat anyone who did not have flash enabled...