Replace the word "CAPTCHA" from front-facing text
David Lesieur - January 7, 2009 - 04:03
| Project: | Mollom |
| Version: | 6.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | User interface |
| Category: | task |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | postponed |
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Description
While the word "CAPTCHA" is perfectly understood by the Drupal community, I don't think it resonates with the audiences of all sites needing a CAPTCHA...
I'm sure all end-user messages could be reformulated to avoid this geeky acronym.
Some examples from big names:
- Yahoo: "Type the code shown".
- Google: "Word Verification: Type the characters you see in the picture below. Letters are not case-sensitive."
- MSN: "Type the characters you see in this picture. This ensures that a person, not an automated program, is creating this account."

#1
We use the word "CAPTCHA" only in the settings page (available for administrators). For visitors, we actually use the term "Word verification".
#2
In mollom.module 1.2.2.54, I can find:
#3
If we want all the instances replaced, let's figure out what each string should be changed to.
#4
subscribe ;)
#5
I can certainly see both sides to this issue.
Pros and cons for a change:
+ As an acronym, it is pretty awful, I agree, and was obviously created for the way it sounded (as opposed to an unpronounceable initialism).
+ As David Lesieur points out, all the other places (who probably have actual usability staff) use some other phrase. As has been noted, people's expectations are created on other sites; in many cases, your site should conform to the standard if there is one.
- CAPTCHA is a recognized acronym; I see 89,000,000 entries in Google for it. (And 159,000 for 'CAPTCHA Mollom'.)
- I've never been a fan of dumbing stuff down if the word being debated is a word someone, IMO, should know (I favored 'taxonomy' over 'category'.)
But really, this does comes down to figuring out what we could use in its place.
#6
Going to leave this as postponed for now.