Jack Bohn <jack.bohn64@gmail.com> writes:
>Posting through Google Groups the last coupla days, one new step has been a=
>dded after clicking "Post." A pop-up identified as from iCaptcha has a che=
>ck box for me to check that says, "I'm not a robot". (I check the box on t=
>he premise that if Artificial Intelligence is really an intelligence, then =
>it can lie.)
>
>On the assumption that the megacorp would not take action unless it was a s=
>erious problem, I begin to wonder how serious the problem is. We are still=
> getting spam, hopefully that means it is spam worked by human hands.

Just before they did this, we were getting 10,000 spam messages _a day_
in comp.lang.c. Google made that (and a few others in the same heirarchy)
read-only, and that killed the spam dead. Then they added the captcha,
although I think comp.lang.c is still read-only.

What's infuriating is that you have to copy EVERYTHING you just wrote.

Why? Because there's no guarantee that something won't malfunction during the three-step process!

Then you have to start all over.

On Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 2:16:54 PM UTC-5, Lenona wrote:
> What's infuriating is that you have to copy EVERYTHING you just wrote.
>
> Why? Because there's no guarantee that something won't malfunction during the three-step process!
>
> Then you have to start all over.

I do not get referred onto the 3rd(?) step, like as not.

--
Kevin R

What I mean is, first you click on "post," then you check the box, and then you click on "continue."

But again, there's no guarantee something won't get stuck - and then everything gets lost.

On Tuesday, 7 November 2023 at 19:16:54 UTC, Lenona wrote:
> What's infuriating is that you have to copy EVERYTHING you just wrote.
>
> Why? Because there's no guarantee that something won't malfunction during the three-step process!
>
> Then you have to start all over.

This catches me out. I just lost one GG post,
possibly by thinking of a last touch to add
and consequently cancelling from the
"I'm not a robot" prompt, expecting to be
back in the editing box... but no I wasn't.

On Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:31:57 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, 7 November 2023 at 19:16:54 UTC, Lenona wrote:
>> What's infuriating is that you have to copy EVERYTHING you just wrote.
>>
>> Why? Because there's no guarantee that something won't malfunction during the three-step process!
>>
>> Then you have to start all over.
>
>This catches me out. I just lost one GG post,
>possibly by thinking of a last touch to add
>and consequently cancelling from the
>"I'm not a robot" prompt, expecting to be
>back in the editing box... but no I wasn't.

When I was on a newspaper's web-site that offered comment boards, I
regularly typed my reply into a Notepad file ("Messages.txt", still
around and occasionally useful even now) because the one they picked
was very unreliable.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Wednesday, November 15, 2023 at 12:22:31 PM UTC-5, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:31:57 -0800 (PST), Robert Carnegie
> <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, 7 November 2023 at 19:16:54 UTC, Lenona wrote:
> >> What's infuriating is that you have to copy EVERYTHING you just wrote.
> >>
> >> Why? Because there's no guarantee that something won't malfunction during the three-step process!
> >>
> >> Then you have to start all over.
> >
> >This catches me out. I just lost one GG post,
> >possibly by thinking of a last touch to add
> >and consequently cancelling from the
> >"I'm not a robot" prompt, expecting to be
> >back in the editing box... but no I wasn't.

> When I was on a newspaper's web-site that offered comment boards, I
> regularly typed my reply into a Notepad file ("Messages.txt", still
> around and occasionally useful even now) because the one they picked
> was very unreliable.

That's what I do when I want to get an idea down for a post, but I know I'm going to have to think about it more, or even research, and I don't want to leave the computer on with an open browser on GG. Mine's "delete_me.txt".... hmm, it's got the beginning of a book review, but I've forgotten too much of the book to finish it.

Meanwhile, the deluge on rasfw seems to be increasing, but still none on a few dead or semi-moribund groups I occasionally look in on. They probably use some form of analytics to only post to live groups. Will the deluge of spam posts go into their next round of analytics, or might they have a way of telling the spam to produce that mythical list of "strong leads" as in the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross".

--
-Jack