CAPTCHA

This request for comment is to discuss improvements to our current MediaWiki CAPTCHA.

Main issues

 * Our CAPTCHAs are in English only
 * Our CAPTCHAs violate accessibility principles
 * Our CAPTCHAs don't stop bots at all.
 * Bug 5309: the words used by the CAPTCHA, whatever the engine, should be in the user's language. An unknown number of new users and edits are lost from non-English speaking people. This should be possible by changing the dictionary used by the standard CAPTCHA or by ad-hoc solutions like WikiCAPTCHA below.

Replacing CAPTCHA with a honeypot
One possibility for avoiding localizations issues with the CAPTCHA is simply to remove it and replace it with a honeypot.

A homegrown reCAPTCHA clone
Write a version of reCAPTCHA that uses document images that have been processed by MediaWiki's ProofreadPage extension for Wikisource: WikiCAPTCHA. In other words, a CAPTCHA that feeds data to ProofreadPage to augment its OCR processing. You might build on [//github.com/CristianCantoro/wikicaptcha existing code]. It is worth noting that "reCAPTCHA hold no specific patents for the technology behind their text CAPTCHA algorithms (At least none they discuss on their website or are able to be found on the US Patents & Trademark Office site)", according to one blogger.

Filed as bug 32695.

Also discussed art Wikimania 2012 with the presentation Wikicaptcha: a ReCAPTCHA-like solution for Wikisource