Check it out! It’s like a CAPTCHA IQ test.

If Fox Nation implemented something like this, they’d have zero commenters (unless, of course, they made the wrong answers “right”).

(via BuzzFeed)

Thats right.  Their a bunch of idiots.  Its obvious.  They cant even spell.  Well Ill be damned!

I actually find grammar police more annoying than bad grammar and that’s not because I am a serious offender myself. I’m not. I just don’t find any real correspondence between brains and grammar and, in fact, an obsession with things like their/there is frequently the red flag of a middle-brow philistine.

Still, I love the idea of captchas designed to weed out certain people for not knowing things that they should know, like what a fallacy is.

*correlation

Gfreeman wins.

Words mean things. And this comment thread fills me with joy.

Your retarded!

@Mike Girard
without getting anal about it, surely anything that keeps phallusies out must be pretty cool

Many of the words we use today are misspellings of words from long ago. Most words that have changed spelling and/or pronunciation have done so through popular usage. So when the majority of people use ‘their’ instead of ‘there’ then the spelling will change. The English language has evolved over centuries and will continue to, with or without the complaints of pedants. Get over it you elitist snobs.

Have respect for language (all languages).  Without it, we’re screwed.

Do you really want to go back to the time where there was no capitalization, no punctuation, no rules for spelling, and no spaces between letters?

ohwaitittsalreadyhappening :o(

The argument of “language evolving” simply does not apply here.  The difference between “there”, “they’re” and “their” is not a matter of one word taking over the usage of another, it is a matter of people not knowing the difference between three different words!  These are not becoming the accepted new forms, they are just simply stupid mistakes by stupid people.  Get over it you apologists for lack of education.

I dunno…

Me, I’ve sensed an alarming level of sentience in the Captchas. If we let them start forcing us to think, soon the captchas will look like…

“Computers are our _________”

(Friends, enemies)

“Humans aren’t going to make it without allowing the internet to ________ them.

(rule, ignore)

The captcha subroutine is completely _________”

(Benevolent, malevolent)

Entering the wrong answers will cause the captchas to block that anti-technology human from participation.

Soon they’ll be giving US the Turing test.

Oh wait, that’s already what this is.

Chris, right! It’s the difference between “nuking” them and “going nuculer” on them.

All I want is a final answer to wether irregardless is a word or not.

The statement…. “words mean things.” in the comments made me laugh harder than the entire article.

Irrespective of whether or not your irksome interrogatory, the irrelevancy of which is irremediable, is meant to irresponsibly and irrationally irritate, I will irrevocably state, yes, as irritable as it makes me, irregardless is in fact, and irreversibly a word, though usually and irrefutably listed as nonstandard.

We’re all writing a lot more (the English guys over at Mojo message boards taught me that “alot” is spelled “a lot,”) I am still trying to learn when and where to put punctuation when it is inside quotations or parentheses. I probably got the above wrong. There are some good sites on the ‘net. Y’all are welcome to correct me. (I was being a juvenile delinquent when I shoulda been in English class; regret it now, kids, a little bit!)

Man, did this thread prove my point.

Look over these comments and decide who you’d want to chat with: the people having pissing contests over correct usage or the people who give sound reasons for not doing so.

Most of these errors are committed by people who know better but are writing in haste. If the meaning of a passage is clear, the communicator is successful.

Give me a bad speller over a freelance manager/teacher any day.

Mike: Michael said “fallacy”, not “phallusy”. Yours is a classic “ad homonym” argument.

Michael: i knowrite? i am on ur side u seam cool.

Chris:

You should brush up on independent clauses and the use of commas, semicolons and periods. Really, I had no idea what you were talking about.

——

Aren’t I smart and entertaining?

Kind of like WFMU’s math captchas.

The guy who said this is “elitism” is a fucking idiot. If good grammar is the preserve of an elite, we’re all doomed.

Mike Girard: dare I say it? You’re being a bit of a pedant about making your point here. Really, all you had to do was say it once. Now you’re just trying to score points which on a message board is kinda lame.

Grammar short-hand is okay with me. It’s obvious when someone writes incorrectly knowingly. It’s the classic “teh gays” brigade that are the most telling however and more often than not indicate a lack of finesse or thought. Yeah, pointing it out proves nothing. But I would like to see if this sort of captcha test would work. If nothing else it would frustrate people in an entertaining way.

My grammar lives with my grandpa.

absolute bollox, y iz it acceptabble to bee in the rong wen your knot write?

1. Ad HOMINEM

2. Grammar does not correlate with intelligence, but it DOES make writing easier to understand. There’s no reason to be snobby about it, but your point will be clearer if you abide by the conventions of spelling and grammar.

3. This post was pretty hilarious!! Thank you!!

For the third Captcha, if you change “in” to “on,” then “loose” would be the correct answer. Just sayin’.

If you haven’t already, could you add “than/then” to the array of available options? That one in itself would weed out a particularly large number of commentators.

Or, as they might say, “more then a few.”

I also notice with mild amusement that the CAPTCHA presented below is your standard, work-a-day CAPTCHA…

Grammar DOES correlate with intelligence. Your brain’s ability to understand the complexities of spelling and syntax are a strong indication of how well you can understand other similarly complex systems. Grammar and math are so fundamental that they’re taught before nearly everything else. If you can’t retain what you learn, then your intelligence can be called into question.

Granted, a person can be a terrible writer and still be an intelligent person, but to say there is no correlation between grammar and intelligence is absurd. The correlation is certainly there.

Paul, tell it to Einstein and Darwin, notoriously poor spellers.

Talk to any professional editor.

I said previously that I wish there was a captcha for weeding out people who don’t know what a fallacy is. I would add to that:

1. A captcha for weeding out people who think saying something over and over again constitutes evidence.

2. A captcha for weeding out people who think the purpose of communication is to demonstrate what an obedient little tool you were in your middle class high school.

Mark D - If I sound pedantic then I misfired, since it’s pedantry that I am attempting to attack. I will cop to a prejudice for bright people as opposed to people who are good at remembering rules and pointing out errors in other people.

I don’t think that by pointing out grammar errors in someone who is extolling the virtues of good grammar is necessarily pointless.

Pedantic though I may be, I don’t think I have ever wished for perfect strangers to be entertainingly frustrated. Now that’s lame.

It is an overstatement to say that there is no correlation between good grammar and intelligence, since grammar encompasses a whole lot of knowledge.

I should have made a distinction between the subcategory of spelling—which I don’t think requires much in the way of brains and which many people are bad at—and grammar as a whole. These captchas are all about common spelling errors which frequently manifest as typographic rather than usage errors.

I think that poor grammar and spelling more often reveal a lack of educational opportunity than a lack of native intelligence. The corollary of that is that an obsession with things like there/their reveals the snobbery, insularity and general cluelessness of people whose educational opportunities are greater. That the errors in question almost never cause confusion - because their meaning can be so readily inferred from context - is particularly revealing of pettiness.

There is actually someone at my gym who takes a red pen to signs and advertisements. Is that a smart person? No. He’s an idiot and an asshole.

@Mike Girard

Don’t bring me into your faggety argument just because your penis is below average and daddy din’t hug you.

“Is that a smart person?”

Mike - Didn’t you mean, “Is HE a smart person?”

Mike Girard, you are an idiot. Nothing you say or do will change that fact. Your argument towards poor spelling is simply unfounded. Sure, new words arise from people injecting lingual ideas into the vernacular, but a conscious ignorance of your/you’re and there/their/they’re only serves to confirm that you have a child-like intellect. Go back to Fox news, imbecile.

yeah go back to fox news cause fox is stupid! u probably into glen beck.

/facepalm

and the trolls have been fed.

EWWW BURN!

Pure genius.

Congratulations - you just locked out dyslexics from being able to voice their opinion. Have a cookie.

That true Billy Boy if you watch Fox or any thing like Rush u are stupid and probably dont even have education go back to school get some education before u step get a brain next time

You can add: sight, site, cite

Also, your idea excludes foreigners. However, capitalization and punctuation are fundamental too. It’s the difference between helping your uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse

If you want to weed out those who don’t know proper spelling & grammar, great idea… but don’t have any illusions that you’re succeeding at weeding out the idiots.

Awesome. Now let them enter their email address and dump any @AOL.COM user; especially if these mongobongos type them in caps.

Mike Girard:

“Pedantic though I may be, I don’t think I have ever wished for perfect strangers to be entertainingly frustrated.”

I wasn’t the least bit entertained.

An interesting idea at first, but very cruel to those who suffer from dyslexia. This is an accessibility anti-pattern.

I love to loose my temper _on_ a discussion group.

Lovely idea.

How about some credit to the actual originator of these captchas: Defective Yeti.
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/iacaptchas/

The most obnoxious trolls are the educated ones.

Totally agree with Milk, spam protection should keep out the bots but shouldn’t restrict other users from getting in.

Capatcha’s are clunky and ugly anyway and should be avoided where possible.
A better option is something like a ‘honeypot’ where you’ve got a hidden input variable, which if populated when submitted, means that a bot has submitted the form and the contents should be rejected. You’d put more than just this on obviously, but you shouldn’t make spam protection intrusive to your users.

Another one:

Lost vs. Loss.

Funny that captcha here for the comment section isn’t powered by the one specified above?

Daniel:
Why would this idea exclude foreigners?

Other languages don’t generally share the same homophones as English. Since their/there/they’re are all very different from each other in my native language, there is no possibility of accidentally conflating the concepts.

So when it comes to English I suspect it’s actually easier to foreigners to see the distinction and answer these questions correctly.

Grammar snobs: I agree with you; however, I feel it pertinent to point out that, technically, “you’re” and “they’re” aren’t grammatically correct. They are contractions of real words, and thus not actual words and thus you are all rendered moot.

#3 is ambiguous, IMO… When you loose your temper in a discussion group, you lose the argument.

But the point certainly wasn’t loosed on me. (or was it lost on me, I can never tell…)

I tend to agree with the troll actually. Correcting people on the internet is a waste of time and adds nothing of value to the discussion.

Still, whenever I see one of these glaring errors, I immediately file the person who made it under “Idiot”. This happens completely subconsciously.

Hey JoJo maybe u our just not educated u have to be educated to read this blog cause they talk about smart shit like politics and acid. maybe u need to go get some educated for once.

Rubbing my hands with glee, waiting for this thread to completely devolve and prove my point.

You then end up with captchas like this one http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/2268237733_cda4a1dbb3.jpg?v=0

If you want to thin out the idiots, put up a math equation and ask them to solve it.

This is a good idea. Let’s take it a step further: follow it up with a Khan Academy video delivering a grammar lesson to the poor soul who cannot pass the tests?

A better idiot will just evolve.  That can spell and grammar good.

I wouldn’t have a problem with these basic errors being made by those for whom English is their 2nd language. Unfortunately, they’re being made by those whose 1st language is English.

It is time to remove the concept of captcha

one good way it this http://keypic.com

There there there, I’m sure most people who make is mistake actually know the difference, but lose this knowledge when typing frantically. Put another way, these captchas wouldn’t stop most people from posting, as they would likely, given a moment to reflect, make the right choice.

Test them on their proverbs!

Needs one more - “your” vs “you’re”

Ahahhhahahha…..it’ll keep the libs off too, because they can’t read.

Oh, better yet, questions and answers a civics test, libs will lose every time.

“...questions and answers a civics test, libs will lose every time.”

You sure showed them.

SheilaK:

“Oh, better yet, questions and answers a civics test, libs will lose every time.”

That’s not a sentence.

I almost overlooked the love of my life because I didn’t realize he was dyslexic. Not only does my husband mistake these words, he mistakes homonyms in general—mite/might, guest/guessed, etc.

Long story short, don’t equate spelling with intelligence.

People who cannot spell or select the correct word are either uneducated, unintelligent, or just plain lazy. Those of you who think “we elitists English Nazis” are just a bunch of anal snobs are either uneducated, unintelligent, or just plain lazy, and are trying to justify your lack of effort.

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