Goodbye Cookbook Captcha?

Do you know the Cookbook Captcha that often happens when you sign in? We've taken it down for now for existing members. Its primary purpose is to deter spammers, and they aren't signing in and out so much as signing up once, doing their worst and never coming back.

If things change, we'll have to bring it back.

I know some members will be sad about this. The staff were. It's a fun little ritual, at least for some of us, and one staff member said they had gotten cookbook recommendations from it! But it's also an irritant, as some people find it hard to do. So it's gone for now.

>1 timspalding: ah right, I remember - not that long that I joined and passed the test ;-).

Stupid few spammers that force this kind of actions! In German I do wish people like that the Zipperlein! Thanks for keeping the boat afloat and the pennants flutter, Matey. Aaarg - (to honour Pirate-Day :-).).

Sad to see!! Goodnight, sweet prince...

so long, and thanks for all the fish. (Dunno if it could have been catalogued as cookbook too :-)

I'll miss it (I use private browsing mode). It was a fun captcha.

Wait... was I supposed to click "yes" on "To Serve Man" ?

To Serve Man

There seem to be several books with that title.

Certainly click yes on Confessions of a Flesh-Eater. It's got recipes.

Tender Is the Flesh lacks recipes but covers raising and slaughtering livestock.

haha I signed in without even noticing. So I had to log out and try again so I could notice. haha. I think it's great that it's gone if it didn't make a difference.

Your delightful 'captcha' was something I looked forward to! It taught me much about the variety of cookery!! I'd been hoping that someday you would 'serve' / present all cookery titles as a test! Should this ever return, which would mean there was some kind of problem to create the need, I will sigh just a little and then enjoy the page!

Oh, Tim, maybe you could put a link to it under Folly? Just for those of us who enjoy the little things in life, like a good captcha...

Would it be removed completely, or would it only feature when new accounts are created? I understand that spammers aren't tending to sign in again after causing mischief the first time, but maybe it would defer at least a few that way?

>Thank you for being on top of this issues. Very much appreciate all of the efforts. Love LibraryThing!

Nekomancer-945:

Every time I saw the captcha, the two were balanced - either 4 and 4 or 3 and 5. I suspect that was intentional; I saw it often enough, between switching devices or switching accounts, that I would have seen a 2/6 on occasion if it had been truly random.

>14 lorax: I'm pretty sure that when the captcha was introduced it was stated that there would always be either 3, 4, or 5 cookbooks presented.

I actually will miss it because I got a lot of ideas about books I have never read.

Sorry to lose the funnest captcha on the Internet.

Aw, I thought it was kind of fun!