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If internet points serve anything, it should be at least to bear clear evidence whether a user provides valid answers or spam. Not for Stack Exchange though.

I tried to answer a question in Ask Ubuntu (while logged in, of course) only to be greeted by the obnoxious "are you a human being" dialog.

enter image description here

I block Google JS so the Captcha won't even load, and I'm not training Google's AI for free anyway.

Would you consider fixing this bug so that risk assessment is done in a more reasonable manner?

Update: Today I tried again but first I accepted the Jquery fallback cookie. Whatever that means, my browser always cleans up all cookies when terminated, so I fail to see how that would be evidence that I'm not a robot — but I'm quite ignorant of web site management so do correct me if I'm wrong.

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    Question - did you take a really long time to finish writing an answer? Like... more than a day? Because that's one of the specific times we do force a captcha. :)
    – Catija StaffMod
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 21:08
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    The length of an answer doesn't necessarily indicate how long it took to post it. Then it looks like the system was concerned that your question was spam because it's more link than content... And high-rep users should generally know that linking to third-parties without including the bulk of the answer in the post itself is not a great answer - so it's possible that a longer answer wouldn't have caused the system to wonder what's up.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 21:14
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    Oh, yeah, totally serious. I draft things one day and then post them the next all the time... and I have to do captchas. HAHAHA. Now that I think harder, I'm not sure whether that's for answers, too... or just questions... but it's definitely a thing we have. I understand your argument... I'm not sure what all the captcha rules are.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 21:37
  • @Catija there is a general list being CW maintained here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1343/…
    – Luuklag
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 21:42
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    @Luuklag Ah! So it's only 40 minutes on public... I think they changed it to a day on Teams, which is what I'm thinking about... because I never could understand why we have captchas on Teams at all... :/ But if that answer took less than 5 seconds to write, it looks like it might have hit the too quick side of things. :)
    – Catija StaffMod
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 21:50
  • @Catija because there is human interferences into who signs up for a Team perhaps?
    – Luuklag
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 22:00
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    @Luuklag I guess? That makes sense maybe on free teams but not on the ones I run into it on - the business level teams that are paid for by the seat. :D
    – Catija StaffMod
    Commented Sep 27, 2022 at 22:03
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    @Quasímodo I used to hit this all the time cause I'd type out a post, and spend time thinking about it, so I can second that what Cat asked about was serious and it happened to me all the time.
    – Journeyman Geek Mod
    Commented Sep 28, 2022 at 2:54
  • @Quasímodo I also used to hit this all the time when writing an answer and then leaving it for a day, possibly until the WebSocket's heartbeat dies, and then getting Captcha on posting it, possibly due to the system seeing it as an instant post without delay.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Sep 28, 2022 at 5:34
  • There is also Answers entirely copied though properly attributed - e.g., "...simply tacking a "Reference" link at...a wall of unquoted text...does not count as proper attribution" and "we expect answers on Stack Overflow to be original contributions by and large; copying entire texts wholesale is incredibly frowned upon" (my emphasis).
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Commented Sep 28, 2022 at 11:22

1 Answer 1

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I don't see any bug here.

There are two likely reasons why you got that Captcha:

  1. Submitted the answer less than 5 seconds after starting to type it.
  2. Answer has suspicious content, which is very short body and link to external site.

Both of those are used by spam bots. While usually ordinary user with some reputation won't become spam bot, consider those options:

  • Account get hacked
  • Account get sold
  • User leaving browser open in a shared computer

Those things can happen, and can lead to actual spam being posted by the account. Stack Exchange prefers to go the safe way to protect its sites from spam.

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  • @Quasímodo "a well established user selling his account" well, SO reps sell.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Commented Sep 29, 2022 at 4:11

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