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My internet connection is terrible, and there's not much I can do about that.

When I get captcha-ed, I may loose up to minutes just waiting for the HUGE foreground image to load, and then the captcha loads.

Of course when the connection is especially bad, sometimes the HUGE foreground image loads, but not the captcha itself. Then I reload and get captcha-ed again and I have to wait for the HUGE foreground image to load again (for some reason it's not cached by my Firefox).

This is an utter waste of time, and maybe it's self-confirmation bias but I felt like the worse my internet connection is (i.e. the slower and the less reliable it is) the more I get captchaed.

What can I do to overcome this?

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  • Similar concerns: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2167/… ; I like Mehrdad's suggestion "Remove that stupid image. It's a pain to wait for it to load on slow and high latency connections like mine."
    – polygenelubricants
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 12:40
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    +1 from a fellow TCP over carrier pigeon user.
    – user50049
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 12:53

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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You could block the image with Adblock, so that it's not being loaded when you hit the captcha. (Unless that image plays some integral part in the bot-detection. But it's worth a try.)

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  • Firefox can block all images from sstatic.net, which includes the robot image, but also up/down vote arrows and acceptance marks. They're still there if you know where they are; only the images are blocked, not the functionality.
    – polygenelubricants
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 13:15
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    @poly: With an adblocker you can block specific images. You do not have to block all.
    – Ladybug Killer
    Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 13:21
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Slowing down would be my suggestion. The minute or so you lose in just taking your time to perform actions is far less time lost, if you're losing several minutes to the CAPTCHA. So, in fact, by being slower, you'll actually be faster.

If the issue is with making a quick series of revisions to the same answer, then I recommend spending a bit of time evaluating your revision fully before hitting "Save Edits". Make sure you only submit your revision once you have confirmed that you won't be making any additional revisions shortly afterwards.

If you are having real problems when it comes to separate posts (either editing, retagging, or just posting), I suggest a stopwatch, be it a physical one or some quick code you throw together. Use it to pace yourself - its accuracy will be much better at evading CAPTCHAs than relying on intuition.

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  • 3
    Seriously? lol. I can only imagine telling one my clients this and watching the fall out.
    – Kyle Rosendo
    Commented Sep 1, 2010 at 15:13
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Assuming you are a logged in user and have >= 200 reputation:

After successfully completing one captcha, we now suppress captcha for 5 minutes on your account.

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My recommendation:

Once you are blocked by a Captcha spin up another thread.

In other words open another tab with the homepage and load that so you are ready to answer the next question. Then, go back to the Captcha, fill it out and make the post. Then close that tab and you already have a new list of questions ready to go.

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The problem I get with Captcha is when retagging questions.

  • I first open the quesions in seperate tags,
  • then read them to check each sould be retaged - closing the tag for the one I don't want to retag
  • At this point I decide if the retag is worth it
  • I then copy+paste the new tag into all the quesions, this is when I hit the Captcha
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