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Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 12:43
by Sky_walker
Human Parsing Question: *
To verify your humanity, count the vowels in the field name above this explanation.
Could someone please, get rid of this ridiculous question from the registration form?! Or at least: change it to something that can be quickly solved by humans?

It's impossible to find any tools online that would count vowels and this task is next to impossible for people who don't speak English natively - different languages cand have different vowels and counting vowels in entire sentence is... Jesus, that's like the exact opposite of Turing test, you just found a way to quickly recognize who is a robot, cause humans can't pass this test.

ps. If you wonder how I solved the test - I wrote a PHP script counting vowels. I also asked on an IRC for help - they gave me a wrong answer.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 12:58
by Silentwings
The funniest thing about this post is that our current forum spammers (of k1tchen related fame) are humans who speak very bad english.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 13:00
by Sky_walker
Obviously those who speak English well cannot solve this task either. Besides - questions on registration form should help you find who is a bot, not who speaks english well.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 13:03
by Anarchid
You cannot count vowels, but you can write a script that counts vowels?

Wow.

My respects, and welcome.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 13:04
by Sky_walker
Life of a programmer... ;)

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 15:51
by Jools
Sky_walker wrote:Life of a programmer... ;)
I agree with the OP that this question is a bit bad, yes, other languages has other vowels, and English grammar is very complex and most native speakers don't get it either.

But do you have an example of a good alternative to this question? Like when was OTA released and by whom?

It is a tradeoff between welcoming new people and comating spam. Just look in the forum, there are daily threads about kicthens or k1tchens or other clever spellings. I think the mods have cencored the word -------, but they always come back. They are human spammmers so there has to be something to make their registration annoying. And regrettably this spills over to new people who want to register. But you only need to do this once, in contrast to those spammers.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 15:51
by Beherith
And the most important question is, is Y a vowel?

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 15:52
by Jools
I think it is a vowel sometimes and sometimes not.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 16:17
by Anarchid
English grammar is very complex
There are three morphological cases in English. Three. It's probably lowest there is, and it's the lowest i can bring up without googling.

If it's "very complex", then Estonian with 14 is probably just alien. :D

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 16:19
by Jools
But grammar is more than cases. For instance, Estonian has no subjunctive mood.

Actually I don't know Estionian that well, but I assume it's 90% like Finnish gramatically. Here's are all conjugations of the Finnish verb be, and the english one:

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/Finnish/olla.html

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/English/be.html

Whereas you see how for instance the Etruscan language is miuch simpler:

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php? ... mul&H1=191

:)

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 16:21
by Anarchid
-ks

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 17:03
by CarRepairer
Beherith wrote:And the most important question is, is Y a vowel?
There's no 'Y' in "Human Parsing Question."
Sky_walker wrote:ps. If you wonder how I solved the test - I wrote a PHP script counting vowels. I also asked on an IRC for help - they gave me a wrong answer.
I strongly suspect we are being trolled. :regret:

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 17:52
by Jazcash
This is an english speaking forum, and if you don't know what a vowel is and you're incapable of looking it up then you probably shouldn't be on the engine forums where most discussion would require decent english skills anyway.

Regardless, it's a terrible spam prevention measure. Enter '8' to get passed the spam prevention? Really?

And why are you talking about vowels as if they're some sort of cryptology?

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 18:06
by Jools
Jazcash wrote: And why are you talking about vowels as if they're some sort of cryptology?
Because they are, sort of. For example y is a vowel in the word "happy", but not in the word "yard". Vowel represents a specific sound and not always some letter.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 18:08
by Silentwings

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 18:16
by klapmongool
CarRepairer wrote:
Beherith wrote:And the most important question is, is Y a vowel?
There's no 'Y' in "Human Parsing Question."
Sky_walker wrote:ps. If you wonder how I solved the test - I wrote a PHP script counting vowels. I also asked on an IRC for help - they gave me a wrong answer.
I strongly suspect we are being trolled. :regret:
He actually asked in lobby and got the answer from picasso. I suspect Sky walker failed to google 'vowels wiki'.

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 18:19
by Jazcash
Jools wrote:
Jazcash wrote: And why are you talking about vowels as if they're some sort of cryptology?
Because they are, sort of. For example y is a vowel in the word "happy", but not in the word "yard". Vowel represents a specific sound and not always some letter.
Ha, didn't know about this 'Y' is sometimes a vowel thing. In the UK they just teach that vowels are 'A', 'E', 'I', 'O', and 'U' and everything else is a consonant. Makes me curious as to where whoever created the validation test is from :P

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 19:08
by SinbadEV
"Describe, in single words, only the good things that come to your mind about your mother."

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 19:39
by Jools
SinbadEV wrote:"Describe, in single words, only the good things that come to your mind about your mother."
You volunteer to read through those essays and evaluate which ones pass?

Why not just ask "What is your favourite colour?" and accept any answer except "I don't know" :)

Re: Human Parsing Question

Posted: 05 May 2014, 19:52
by Jazcash
Any clever spam bot with the power to brute force would see 'colour' next to the field and just try all the colours. Maybe make a couple custom captcha images that aren't part of any other system, or at least any other popular one and perhaps ask the user to state the opposite of it or spell it in reverse.