h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why was I asked to type in a captcha when I opened h2g2?????

This seems to happen a lot to some people and not at all to others.

I suggest you post it as technical feedback, although clearly this has been going on for a while.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'Ask h2g2' to 'Technical Feedback'.

Hi,

The Captchas only affect the older skins, which we can't do anything about I'm afraid. They've been brought in as an anti-spam / anti-hacking method by our content delivery network, and for some reason it thinks you're trying to spam the site. We've tweaked the settings as much as we can, and as far as we're aware this doesn't affect the new system (that we can do something about), although if you've just got on in Pliny, Congratulations! You're the first!

Seriously though, they're very annoying I know. But we can't alter the old skins to not trigger them, we've done what we can with the settings for the captcha itself, and the new skins don't trigger them at all.

But I use the old skins for most of my editing, and I very rarely get these. (Only when it is most inconvenient).

??? Captchas. I have never had this and use Brunel nearly all the time, not beause I dont like the new pages I cant get used to them, because I know where everything is and Brunel is a habit now.

Is it the way you open the site I start on the new FP and reset my preferances at the start of the session. Brunel pops up and works fine, maybe this by passes the spam filter

The captchas are part of the Content Delivery Network, and totally out of our control.

The last time I looked at the logs for them they were stopping thousands of potential hacking attacks a week, running silently in the background.

We've had a few volunteers who come across them when editing or updating, and we've been able to whitelist those users. However it's not a practical approach for all users of the site. Thankfully, by far and a way the huge majority of the users of the site are in Pliny, so it's a small percentage of a small percentage that have been getting them. If the problem persists after you've entered it a couple of times, take a screenshot (full screen, showing clock and web address) and we'll try and find the cause in the logs.

Oh, and email the screenshot to [email protected]

So the content delivery system thinks someone's trying to spam the site?

Check the content. Does it include text strings like "Isle of Wight"?

Cool old Guy testing pliny on XP
"All dna skins and Pliny fail for editing the affected entry.

Seconds later, using Debian I can."

Pastey's comments above have subsequently been shown to be completely wrong.

1. The captcha problem affects Pliny just as much as the old skins.
2. The captcha system only rejects pages after a valid code has been entered. It is therefore not doing its job correctly.
3. There's always something you can do about an external provider - stop using them.

There's no point in preventing hacking attempts if the system is unusable.

My comments were absolutely correct when I wrote them.

I no longer have anything to do with the hosting/coding aspect of h2g2 so can't tell you what's changed, but if what I said before no longer applies, I can guarantee you something has changed.

So rather than saying what I said is wrong, perhaps rephrasing to say it no longer applies?

If you like.

I do like, because the way you originally said it implied that I was either incompetent or lying. Neither of which I'm a big fan of.

Of course, having met you in person and grown to know your helpful nature over the years, I'm sure that's not what you meant.

Whatever the situation was in 2013, Pastey's comments no longer appear to apply to the current problem with the Captcha, suggesting that something has changed in the system:

1. The problem with the CloudFlare accepting the captcha code but the user being returned to a blank editing window rather than seeing their entry contents saved applies equally in Pliny and in all the old Ripley skins.

2. It affects anybody who does more than a small amount of editing.

3. It is more likely to happen to entries that include links, foreign characters and descriptions of foreign places.

4. This is not a problem with the CloudFlare system refusing to accept a valid code - if an invalid code is entered, it immediately asks for another one. It is a problem with CloudFlare accepting the code but then returning control to the wrong place - perhaps it is in fact rejecting the entry in some way based on its contents, but doesn't say this?

Hiya!
As I may have mentioned, work is ongoing, but I have no insight, really, on what or how it's going.
I would recommend anyone with problems to take screenshots, which include the URL, and send to [email protected] with your comments.

thank you.


Milla

By the time the error appears, the URL has been cleared. You will need to click your back button to get the screen just before you hit the Update Entry / Add Entry button, then copy that URL and send it to the techies.