On the "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" Quiz show, you can win just £500 for getting the first question right ... but then the question is an easy one. It's designed, I suspect, to help put participants at ease. And it would also - very quickly - filter out anyone who wasn't familiar with the local ways and idioms.
There has been an increase in sign up requests to some of the forums I help run - the oxygen of publicity for them also publicises them to people who's job it is to advertise other products online. We already have
Captcha Technology running - "retype this word from a graphic" - and that traps the automata, but it still allows passage from the spammer who's going through lots of forums by rote, performing the same registration on each.
You'll have seen that some other forums have taken to asking simple questions on ther registration - but questions that are only simple to people who have read up on the subject or have local knowledge. And so I'm starting to experiment with such questions. Getting them wrong isn't an immediate and visible reject (yet ?) - for testing, I'm starting by just logging responses and using that as extra data in my decision.
Added to the registration form:
echo '<tr><td><b>Check Question</b><br>
Which county is Melksham in?</td>
<td><select name=sqn>
<option value=0>Please Choose from:</option>
<option value=1>Essex</option>
<option value=2>Hampshire</option>
<option value=3>Suffolk</option>
<option value=4>Wiltshire</option>
<option value=5>Warwickshire</option></select></td></tr>';
And added to the page that accepts the completed registration form:
$fhj = fopen("$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/../secret.txt","a");
$now = date("r");
fputs($fhj,"$_POST[sqn] $_POST[user] $_POST[email] $now\n");
fclose($fhj);
For testing, I can then have a quick look at that file to see if a potential user knows his "bangers and mash" from his "bangers and pineapple", "bangers and bumpers" and "bangers and chips" ... and potentially later on I can automate acceptances and rejections based on the answer.
(Source code is suitable for SMF / Simple Machines Forum. Variable names, etc, would need to be changed for other software)
(written 2010-05-26)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G903 - Well House Consultants - Running and moderating forums and social media sites [22] Falling out over the silliest things - (2004-08-21)
[29] Silence is Golden - (2004-08-26)
[115] Expiration dates or times on web pages - (2004-11-12)
[130] Spelling and grammar - (2004-11-25)
[204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
[231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
[248] Use me, but use me effectively - (2005-03-16)
[424] How not to run a forum - (2005-08-24)
[516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
[651] Please Register with Opentalk - but just once! - (2006-03-19)
[806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
[828] Freedom of speech and freedom to post - (2006-08-10)
[841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
[919] Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y - (2006-11-09)
[923] Why shouldn't I spam? - (2006-11-13)
[948] Running an on line campaign - (2006-11-27)
[1088] Why use BBC code not HTML? - (2007-02-21)
[1190] Save the Forum - A regular clean sweep - (2007-05-17)
[1362] No Thank You - (2007-09-23)
[1472] The Horse goes on and on - (2007-12-15)
[1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
[1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
[1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
[1539] A forum is not always the best vehicle - (2008-02-14)
[1563] Guidlines for posting on a forum - (2008-03-04)
[1569] I dont care - goodbye - (2008-03-09)
[1578] Please don't shout at me! - (2008-03-16)
[1595] First Great Western Weekend - (2008-03-30)
[1678] Software - changes and delays. But courses must run on time! - (2008-06-15)
[1759] While the world sleeps ... - (2008-08-19)
[1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
[1972] Pettifog and forum boards away from public view - (2009-01-03)
[2103] Ask the Tutor - Open Source forum - (2009-03-25)
[2116] Why do we delay new forum members through authorisation? - (2009-04-03)
[2156] Stopping forum spam - control of the signup process - (2009-05-04)
[2162] Admins thoughts on banning a member from a forum - (2009-05-09)
[2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
[2254] Forum membership - a privilege not a right - (2009-06-22)
[2386] Computing under the influence of alcohol - (2009-08-29)
[2526] A reluctance to move from old shoes to new - (2009-12-05)
[2527] Flying tonight - (2009-12-05)
[2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
[2820] Netiquette for forum newcomers - (2010-06-20)
[3479] Practical Extraction and Reporting - using Python and Extreme Programming - (2011-10-14)
[3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
[4017] Acceptable User Policy / vexatious interacter - (2013-02-24)
[4025] Backups, Codebase, Strategy and more - dealing with forum incidents - (2013-03-03)
[4065] Handling requests to a forum - the background process - (2013-04-17)
[4234] Change to Libel and Defamation laws from 1st January 2014 - (2013-12-31)
[4239] Facebook marketing - early experiences - (2014-01-19)
[4283] Can a legitimate forum post become illegal a year later? - (2014-07-11)
[4307] Identifying and clearing denial of service attacks on your Apache server - (2014-09-27)
[4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
[4403] The unbalanced relationship between customer and provider - (2015-01-21)
[4492] Almost so wrong, but perhaps it's right for some? - (2015-05-11)
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The Light bulb moment when people see how Object Orientation works in real useCourse LunchesThe Perl SurveyTell the Melksham Chamber or you only have yourself to blameThe 500 pound question to get you startedFormatted Printing in PythonThe history and future of Melksham Chamber of CommerceLearning to program in Python 2 ... and / or in Python 3Blowing our own trumpetRegional Spatial Strategy and the next 20 years - Whence Wiltshire under the new government?