tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Mathematical Captcha)

Angelo comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15492)

Angelo — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:25:03 -0700

To Federico: sorry, I had misread your post. Solving a problem when registering might be more reasonable, but still might turn off some serious people.

federico poloni comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15491)

federico poloni — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:02:46 -0700

I see there's general consensus against this proposal, so I won't go on arguing in its favour. Besides that, the measures suggested by grp in the thread linked above address the same problem in a less radical way, and seem to have more appreciation.

@angelo: in any case, I wasn't suggesting solving calculus problems at the time of posting, but when registering, so only once in a user's lifetime.

grp comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15479)

grp — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:03:37 -0700

In another thread I suggested the idea of a two tiered arrangement of questions. The tier most viewed by the community would be the "research" tier, while it would be possible to have other questions relegated to the "other" tier and still be viewed by those of the community who wished to see them. New users could post to the "other" tier and request a sponsor to move it to the research tier. While the standard cries of "But we can't change the software!" and "Why give new research mathematicians any more hurdles?" could be given, I would like to see a consideration of this idea. I think it would address the issue brought up by the the thread and, if properly thought out, could be a direction we want a new platform to go.

I can imagine at least two disadvatanges to such a system, but I prefer other eyes consider this and wish to hear other points of view.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.08.10

Todd Trimble comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15474)

Todd Trimble — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:17:57 -0700

I wouldn't either. And it might turn away mathematicians whom we'd otherwise like to attract.

Angelo comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15473)

Angelo — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:41:21 -0700

I know I would not enjoy solving calculus problems to post, and I suspect that many others would feel the same.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15469)

Qiaochu Yuan — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:05:29 -0700

I agree with Scott. The potential costs far outweigh the minor benefits; and if you think we get a lot of off-topic questions then you have been living a blessed life on the Internet so far...

Scott Morrison comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15467)

Scott Morrison — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:57:30 -0700

Essentially, we've discussed measures like this (but not exactly this) before, and the very strong feeling (at least on my part...) has been that every tiny little hurdle we put in front of real mathematicians using the site is way more costly to us that dealing with inappropriate questions.

At the moment I count only two closed questions on the front page; by historical standards that's actually really good. It might be useful to have a discussion again about people's impressions of the level of inappropriate questions, and what, if anything we should be doing about it. It is possible to deal more robustly with off-topic questions --- e.g. users can flag for moderator attention, suggesting immediate closure or deletion, and this might slightly speed up their disappearance. That said, closures these days usually don't involve the moderators at all.

José Figueroa comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15464)

José Figueroa — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:20:19 -0700

Clearly the sentiment has been expressed before. See, e.g., the last comment (as of this writing) in this thread: http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/203/captcha/

quid comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15458)

quid — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:22:23 -0700

Could you give examples of some questions of which you think that they could be prevented by this sort of captcha?

I looked at some of the captchas, five or so, they were all high-school level or at best basic calculus; question below this level are IMO rare.

In any case, I do not think this would work well. (Even if the site could have it at no effort for anybody, I'd be against it.)

federico poloni comments on "Mathematical Captcha" (15456)

federico poloni — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:16:59 -0700

I am starting to think that in order to prevent completely inappropriate questions from non-mathematicians (there's a *lot* of them) it would be useful to have a "math-oriented captcha" at the first login, in the spirit of http://random.irb.hr/signup.php (try reloading the page several times; 1/3 of the captchas are "derive... and evaluate it at...", and 1/3 are "find the least real zero of the polynomial...").

1) has this already been discussed before? A quick meta search returned nothing.
2) is this possible at all within the Stack Exchange engine? Since the site relies on OpenID rather than a real registration, I am not sure that this is possible at all.
3) do you find it a reasonable idea?