Difficulty entering the Spam Code

Some of us occasionally have a problem entering the Spam Code (CAPTCHA) during the process of making a post. In fact we had a rash of this awhile back and thought we were having a software problem. However after careful investigation and a chat with the forum software support team we decided that this wasn’t a software problem. Some of the characters generated by the spam prevention routine were just plain too hard to recognize.

Since then we have changed the Spam Code to make it a little easier to read but some characters are still going to be hard to recognize. Note that the characters being used are all English language characters.

When you try to match a Spam Code and fail you get an error message telling you:

“You did not provide the correct code for the spam prevention check. Please try again.” This is NOT telling you that it considers your post spam. It is simply telling you that the code you entered doesn’t match the Spam Code above the box.

Additionally another version of the same Spam Code will be presented so you can try to match it again.

Look at the new version closely and you should be able to tell which characters you didn’t recognize the first time. The characters you entered the previous time are still in the box you entered them in so you can quickly compare the two.

If you try again and fail again you will be presented with yet another version of the original Spam Code so you can try again.

If you still don’t see what the problem is, you can save your post so you can paste it back in later and click “Cancel” at the bottom of the dialog & then click “OK” on the “Are you sure?” message. Then you can try to make your post again from the beginning and you will be presented with a completely different Spam Code that will hopefully be easier to match.

A better alternative to all this is simply to become a registered user. You will have to match a Spam Code during the registration process but once you are registered and you have followed the directions you get in the Confirmation E-mail you will never have to enter a Spam Code again. As a registered user you have a User Id and a password you can log in with (without having to enter a Spam Code) and while you are logged in you won’t even be asked for a Spam Code when you post.

Of course registration is free and there are some nice benefits to being registered in addition to not having to enter the Spam Code. See the post entitled “How to register for the forums at uboat.net” for the details of the registration process and see the post entitled “New Forum Features (Revised February 24, 2008)” for the benefits.

Forum Moderator
forum@uboat.net



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2011 10:31PM by Forum Moderator.