Young Writers Society

When you go to create a new account on YWS and your IP address is associated with a known spammer, you're presented with the following question:
Fill in the blank: Young Writers ________

It was very effective for a long time, but there's been a recent rise (a very small one, but one nonetheless) in spambots able to solve it. That means that there's at least a few spambot programs out there that have been programmed to answer it.

So, it's time to create a new question, and I'm hoping the collective wisdom of YWS will come up with a few really good ones!

First, here's what I like about the current question:
- You have to know something about YWS in order to answer it
- It's a piece of cake for anyone who can read, but nearly impossible for a spambot to solve (unless it's programmed for it!)
- It's short

Second, here are some of the qualities that make a bad question:
- Anything math related. Spambots have been programmed to deal with those for a long time.
- Anything like "What is the sixth letter in nutrition?". Again, spambots are programmed for these nowadays.
- Anything where the answer is in the question. Example: Simon is wearing a blue shirt, drives a red car, and has green socks. What is the color of Simon's shirt?

Keeping the above in mind, can you think of any good questions? It doesn't necessarily need to relate to YWS or be short, but those are very nice bonuses.

I've got a few suggestions!

What color is YWS?

What's the opposite of old?

Fill in the blank: The Doctor... Doctor ___?

Yeah, that's all I've got.

I have a few:

How many reviews until your first gold star?

Fill in the blank: The Lounge and the ________room

Fill in the blank: W____ Wars

YWS stands for?

That's all I can think of :/

How many fingers am I holding up? MWAHAHHA
Okay, that probably wouldn't foster good feelings in new members.

I like the what color is YWS, but colorblind people, ya know?

Maybe what YWS stands for, but that sounds kind of like what we have now, something a bot might be able to guess and also not very short.

I was going to agree with what's the opposite of old, but then I realized Holy was probably referring to "young" and I had immediately thought "new."

I'm not sure new members would know enough to answer the rest of Sunshine's questions...

I remember when I joined, the question was "how many letters are there in robot?" Is that another question that spam bots are programmed to answer?

Maybe something like... What's an animal with spots, four legs, and a really long neck? Or some other animal question? I dunno.

Or maybe, name the vowels, excluding y.

Hrmm. Maybe something like "The _____ is mightier than the sword" (or "The pen is mightier than the _____")? Though that might be another one that bots can already answer.

What about something like "What object is above/below the words Young Writers Society in the YWS logo (top left of the page)?"

The only problem is that there could technically be multiple answers, like pen/pencil, sword/dagger etc. depending on how people interpret the picture and they don't know the saying "The pen is mightier than sword" (even though it's a pencil in the picture and not a pen). But maybe there is a way to have two correct answers instead of one? I don't know.

@Nate, have you considered using that one Captcha that shows certain letters in a gray box? Or would you prefer the Captcha to be YWS-related?

"YWS stands for ___" might be a good one! I can't think of anything else, but I'll come back if I do.

Widdershins wrote:I like the what color is YWS, but colorblind people, ya know?

I forgot about colourblindness. O.O

I like Ark's, except that I just heard that saying last week... My sister was like "That's what YWS's logo is about, silly!" That could be just me though!

How about:

The Earth orbits the _____?

Hmm... *goes through motions of making account to refresh memory as what the screen looks like*

There's a rocket banner above the field you register in. Assuming it's always the same banner, maybe a question like:

What is this a picture of?

Maybe you could choose from one of several options, like "rocket", "book" and "dragon" (or something like that) to avoid anyone trying to be too clever and saying it was the Space Shuttle.

Or have an image of something really obvious (like a triangle or a square) and ask the person to say what it is. Or maybe something like, "What shape has four sides?" (Although maybe spambots can solve this... I don't really know)

I remember signing up to one site which suggested users could do a Google search if they didn't know the answer to the question, so maybe a question like Ark's could work?

Sorry, I can't think of any more!

Is it sad that I never noticed the connection between the logo and that saying?

Anyway, I logged out too, to see what an unregistered user could see, and here's some possibilities:

1) How many works are featured on the front page? (might not be good because spambots could just guess random numbers)

2) What color is the top bar where the search box is located? (since the answer is 'black', this shouldn't be affected by color-blindness).

3) What is the name of the tab on the far right (hint: has two words)?

4) To clarify Holy's question, you could make it clear what answer you're looking for. E.g. "Simon's father is an old writer and now Simon writes too. Simon is a _______ writer."

What animals live in trees and like bananas? (with a picture of sad monkey).

Maybe you can just change one word from the old fill-in-the-blank. For example, instead of 'The Young Writer's ________' you can make it 'The Young ________ Society' or 'The _____ Writer's Society'.

I like Stella's too.

Harry ____ goes to Hogwarts.

-Malfoy
-Potter
-Weasley
-Granger

Nate's shirt is blue. What color is a banana?

Fill in the blank: The Brothers Grimm wrote many _____ tales.

What is the correct spelling of the following commonly misspelled word: grammer?

Write the correct past tense verb form of "fly" for the following sentence: "The bird ____ to a branch."