Registration Activation Quiz

[HeroesGraveDev]

I agree to your point: The snipped is no protection from spammers. Not at all.

You must be kidding, trolling or just horribly misinformed.

Sorry, misspelled, bots. (Bots creating lots of accounts)

Wait, which word did you mis-spell?

Anyway, yes it would be simple for a bot to create heaps of accounts IF the creator of the bot knew the answer.

[greenOwl]

I recently did the quiz myself and I have to say I really enjoyed it! It was just a little bit sad that the last question was trivial. About a week ago I learned the Extended Euclidean algorithm at Univerity ... 

[matheus23]

I recently did the quiz myself and I have to say I really enjoyed it! It was just a little bit sad that the last question was trivial. About a week ago I learned the Extended Euclidean algorithm at Univerity ... 

The quiz is just right It even entertains people

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Roquen]

Why all the talk about something that doesn't seem to be broken.  Think about something else.

[Riven]

Judging from some posts here, the activation quiz should be a tad harder

[ra4king]

Judging from some posts here, the activation quiz should be a tad harder

Ha!

[ReBirth]

+1 for harder quiz. At least JGO will be famous because of it

[SocialistPig]

Well that has to be the most different and strange way I've verified I'm not a bot! lol!
Kudo's to who ever thought of it!

Hi All,my first post btw

[Sickan]

I remember when I was even smaller, I couldn't register to these forums because I wasn't experienced enough to solve the various problems I had to solve to register. That part probably saved you all a month or so of newbie questions whose solutions were all readily available on the internet.

[forresthopkinsa]

Lol, I just used Google to find this page, where everyone was saying the answers out loud...
Don't get rid of me; I won't spam, I promise! I'm just very appreciative of many members' works...
And yes, I could've very well just entered that into Eclipse and pushed run, but I was lazy...

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Gamerulf]

I registrated maybe 2 days ago and man I was stupid.
I went to get pen and paper and calculator. Started writing it down untill i realised what a dumb f*ck i was..

[lithos]

Once spammers solve it once, they can spam and spam until they get IP banned. Then they could go and tell their spammer friends the answer and to go do the same.

Good thing spammers don't have friends.

They do have friends and lots of them.

My favorite were those silly chain letters, they would eventually get out of the office network, and then after that they would eventually be routed through a network provided that the spammers knew.   Email addresses with "confirmed active users" sold for quite a bit of cash in bulk, then spammers would trade email address like pokemon cards.

[MatthewNicholls]

I really liked the quiz. I even did the code part on my Android tablet. Is it the same every time or are there more questions? There should be over 100 questions that are in a random order that change frequently May be some questions that involve prime numbers, roots and squares.

[lithos]

When I registered I only needed to write in java...

[devmas]

I was annoyed with the activation quiz because I was registering on my phone, but today I finally remembered to register while at the same time being on the computer. So I did a simple copy/paste of the code and everything went smoothly.

(Also, yay first post!)

[Riven]

If anybody can cook up a way to deter human spammers equally well but in a phone friendlier way, I'm all ears.

[devmas]

Despite the complaint, I actually think the current solution is not bad. I mean, most people are probably going to use the site in the middle of coding, anyway. I'm likely in an extremely small group that mostly browses the web on the phone.

[jam]

People usually don't feel like a community they don't really know or are a part of (yet) have the right to make them "jump trough hoops". I had to fight with myself for 5 minutes over whether I could accept being made to jump or not and in the end what made the decision was that I really wanted to complain about the "registration quiz" xD

So... Since it sounds as if you really need the quiz for spam protection, I would suggest to put a somewhat more detailed explanation like in this post here above the quiz. New users are strangers after all, and strangers react a lot more positive to any sort of requests if they are given an explanation. That also should avoids unnecessary cognitive dissonance (as in "I want in" vs "you do not have reason or right to make me do such things"), leading to a more positive first impression and user experience


As to a solution for the issue with phones: Have you looked at what browsers / browser capabilities your spammers usually announce? I doubt any of them are using (or faking) phone-browsing, so maybe you could just replace the trivia with an automatic activation if the request comes from unusual devices. Might not be worth the trouble to implement though - user that want to register + use the forum from their phones or xbox or whatever might really be a very small group.

[heisenbergman]

I had a good laugh with the activation quiz. I thought it was clever

I showed it to me wife and some colleagues and they were like "WTF is that for real?!" and I laughed. Hehe.

[Riven]

People usually don't feel like a community they don't really know or are a part of (yet) have the right to make them "jump trough hoops". I had to fight with myself for 5 minutes over whether I could accept being made to jump or not and in the end what made the decision was that I really wanted to complain about the "registration quiz" xD

Spending 5 minutes 'fighting' to decide whether to jump through hoops, sounds awfully long. Longer in fact, than to actually jump through these hoops If JGO is unworthy of jumping through hoops for, that's perfectly fine.

We have between 5 and 10 successful activations per day, and we can barely cope with the influx of cube-enthusiast newbies already. Every once in a while we find somebody complaining. I guess you can't please everybody - the activation quiz is meant to be humorous to the target audience and a royal pain in the ass for everybody else.

If a programmer can't be arsed to run a snippet of code, it's telling... and we're probably better off not having those lazy bums on the forum.


I spent long enough on the activation quiz. I'm not going to poke holes in it to make the one-time activation easier for average Joe wielding his tablet, never booting up his desktop anymore. I like to think JGO is among very few open forums on the internet that don't need moderators cleaning up after spammers. The quiz does its job remarkably well, at the expense of this topic needing occasional TLC when people feel mistreated, patronized and/or otherwise offended by an entrance exam.

[jam]

If a programmer can't be arsed to run a snippet of code, it's telling... and we're probably better off not having those lazy bums on the forum.

This is not "laziness", it's just basic human psychology. You would be surprised how much effort people usually put into avoiding doing things that they don't think they should be made to do (which is the opposite of laziness - on principle) and how easily someone can get angry just because he's supposed to "jump trough a hoop". Just imagine some stranger spontaneously would try to make you do some (little, easy but unexpected) thing you didn't think was necessary - wouldn't that make you angry and possibly prone to misjudgement?

I can see why you might be having a hard time understanding what sort of impression and feelings an "outsider" might get when he first sees that, because you are not part of that out-group and those that take such things personally probably only very rarely turn up her (for obvious reasons), but as I already tried to explain: Not being able to fully understand why an action is needed makes someone feel bad about following such requests from strangers. Or in other words: People might have (quote) "no idea that it would take that much to give you the proper screening you're looking for." and due to that think that "y'all were being elitist d*cks.". And things like that. Really, there are many possible outcomes and most of them are unwanted in a forum, which is why I'm telling you how to avoid it (partly): By putting a more detailed explanation on the quiz-site.

I spent long enough on the activation quiz. I'm not going to poke holes in it to make the one-time activation easier for average Joe wielding his tablet, never booting up his desktop anymore. I like to think JGO is among very few open forums on the internet that don't need moderators cleaning up after spammers. The quiz does its job remarkably well, at the expense of this topic needing occasional TLC when people feel mistreated, patronized and/or otherwise offended by an entrance exam.

Oh, sry, I was under the impression that you were all ears when it comes to discussions about such things for some reason and only tried to be helpful. Wouldn't have bothered trying to cook up half-assed ideas otherwise - probably I misunderstood your intentions because I did not have enough Information

[Riven]

putting a more detailed explanation on the quiz-site

The quiz already explains this is an anti-spammer measure. What would you suggest? Forcing you to read a paragraph explaining how sorry we are for making you fill out a quiz, oh, and having to read that paragraph? Adding more text to it doesn't solve anything and will most likely annoy people. In the end they have to fill out that form anyway, so we can just as well be as brief as possible in the accompanying text.

I can see why you might be having a hard time understanding what sort of impression and feelings an "outsider" might get when he first sees that, because you are not part of that out-group ...

Yeah, I'm simple like that. Isn't it sad. But what ya gonna do.


As much as I love to see the gloves come off, you haven't convinced me. Whether I throw a paragraph at people telling me how sorry I am to make them jump to hoops, there will always be people thinking we are

being elitist d*cks

and write a new reply in this thread.

Just imagine some stranger spontaneously would try to make you do some (little, easy but unexpected) thing you didn't think was necessary - wouldn't that make you angry and possibly prone to misjudgement?

If I approached that stranger and that person provides a service I'm interested in, and has a vested interest in keeping that service high quality by making me do something easy, I would consider it.


So far I haven't seen a solution that both keeps the spammers away and involves less hoop jumping.

[jam]

putting a more detailed explanation on the quiz-site

The quiz already explains this is an anti-spammer measure. What would you suggest?

As written above - I would suggest putting something like your post there on the quiz page. It explains everything perfectly. It's like the difference between saying: "I'm going to hit you with this wet sack for safety measures." and the slightly more accurate: "I'm going to hit you with this wet sack now because your hair is on fire". One of those two explanations makes people feel like they deserve an apology. The other one make people want to say "Oh, I see/understand, thanks for your effort!".

Yeah, I'm simple like that. Isn't it sad. But what ya gonna do.

Refer you to a semi-random wikipedia page? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimenter%27s_bias
Meh, ok, I'm out of ideas.

there will always be people thinking we are "being elitist d*cks" and write a new reply in this thread.

Yes (except many of those will just leave). And I think the goal would be to reduce the number of those people further by making it easier for people to see reason, until only those people who can't possibly solve the quiz and get in are left thinking that

Just imagine some stranger spontaneously would try to make you do some (little, easy but unexpected) thing you didn't think was necessary - wouldn't that make you angry and possibly prone to misjudgement?

If I approached that stranger and that person provides a service I'm interested in, and has a vested interest in keeping that service high quality by making me do something easy, I would consider it.

The question wasn't, if you would consider doing it. The question was, if you would be "grumpy" afterwards. :3

[heisenbergman]

putting a more detailed explanation on the quiz-site

The quiz already explains this is an anti-spammer measure. What would you suggest?

As written above - I would suggest putting something like your post there on the quiz page. It explains everything perfectly. It's like the difference between saying: "I'm going to hit you with this wet sack for safety measures." and the slightly more accurate: "I'm going to hit you with this wet sack now because your hair is on fire". One of those two explanations makes people feel like they deserve an apology. The other one make people want to say "Oh, I see/understand, thanks for your effort!".

That's a bad analogy. The activation quiz is the way it is for the sake of the forum and not for the user. I think potential members' reactions towards the activation quiz says more about them than the forum they're signing up for. If one is easily annoyed/offended by something like that, an attitude check is in order... not a re-evaluation of the activation quiz. It could be seen as the community making you earn your membership with a not-so-difficult test as much as the way you saw it as jumping through hoops.

[jam]

Ok, let me fix the analogy, just for the sake of accuracy. We can do stepwise corrections if you want, until it matches the actual situation in every single aspect and stops being an analogy 

Let's say...
 It's like the difference between saying:
- "Quick, jump into the pool, that's standard security procedure against fire around here!"
or
- "Quick, jump into the pool, the house is on fire again (and we prepared the pool especially for such occasion. Also there will be towels once you're iside)"

 

It could be seen as the community making you earn your membership

Wait the moment... I thought that was one of those things that you DON'T want "newbies" to think?

[Riven]

People usually don't feel like a community they don't really know or are a part of (yet) have the right to make them "jump trough hoops".

This is not "laziness", it's just basic human psychology. You would be surprised how much effort people usually put into avoiding doing ...

Yes (except many of those will just leave).

Taking your own impression and/or reasoning and projecting it on the general population to make a point... From what I hear, both in this thread and in my PMs, is that the people that come through, are usually amused by the quiz. Surely this is a biased selection, but it's not all the doom and gloom you portray it to be.

On a side note: do you complain at websites using ReCaptcha? The only reason you accept those monstrosities is that you're conditioned to use them. They offer a horrible user experience to the target audience and let a steadily increasing amount of fancy pants bots through. If you think that the quiz is worse than a re-captcha, we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

I would suggest to put a somewhat more detailed explanation like in this post here above the quiz.

Given your apparent extensive background in social behavior (and odd analogies), this seems out of place. Let's add a poor analogy to the bunch and say that one day I don't want red haired tall girls in my office, so on the door, I'll put up an elaborate text describing how red haired tall girls are denied access because they are morally impure, smelly and generally misinformed. Guess who will be trying to get in no matter what and ruin the place, stealing my sticky notes.... pissed off red haired tall girls! Why? Because I was more or less taunting them.

I'm not going to taunt human spammers, by describing how much trouble they caused and which measures we put in place to keep them out, how they worked around it and how we countered their tactics. It will give them an incentive to prove me wrong, either by compiling the code snippet, or being a tad more nasty, like attacking the server which a script kiddie could do by accidently pressing a button. These are not nice people, and generally best ignored, not taunted and not even mentioned explicitly, they'll just see a simple page, think 'holy cow!' and close the browser tab. Just the way I like it.


Given that my PHP skills do not allow me to show the 'so sorry' paragraph only to non-spammers, I'm forced to show everybody the same page, which given the reasons posted above, is rather terse.

[heisenbergman]

It could be seen as the community making you earn your membership

Wait the moment... I thought that was one of those things that you DON'T want "newbies" to think?

I just signed-up last week and that's how I saw it and I liked it that way.

I saw it as a challenge and I accepted it. For me it shed this forum in a positive light.

[kpars]

Yup ^

I recently joined a couple weeks ago, and I thought it was perfectly fair. The quiz took me about an hour to figure out. The quiz itself is easy, but difficult It's kind of like a maze that is incredibly straightforward, but looks really hard.

Yeah, I know who you are, people googling the answers who somehow found this page.... I'm watching you.

[Jimmt]

I don't see why this topic is still active. This is a programming forum, and that's a very very basic programming question. Deal with it.

[jam]

I'm not going to taunt human spammers

That's an absolutely valid point to justify the decision.

I'd still guess, that the absence of an explanation is a lot more "taunting" - or more of an incentive to unleash spam (or other unwanted behaviour) than a clearer explanation would be.  Discrimination based on behaviour - especially if it's widely believe to be destructive - is usually a rather small source of negative emotions compared to on the other hand *perceived* discrimination based on "capabilities" or seemingly unnecessary "bossing around of someone in an inferior position" - both of which can easily make even unaffected bystanders uncomfortable. But there's really just no way to predict that for sure - partly because we don't know who exactly is responsible for the spam... so I guess "not wanting to taunt spammers further" is an absolutely valid point to justify the decision against a detailed explanation .

people that come through, are usually amused by the quiz. Surely this is a biased selection, but it's not all the doom and gloom you portray it to be.

The selection isn't only biased - it's strongly systematically confounded. To stay with my theme of inadequate analogies: "It's like making a telephone survey to ask people whether they like participating in telephone surveys. Wow, almost everyone loves it!". Which is the main reason why I wanted to point it out - it's just one of those things that are usually really hard to see/understand from the perspective of the "in-group". Didn't want to sound "gloomy-doomy" thought - any potentially present apocalyptic undertones are entirely due to my weird english