Ask HN: How Come There Is No Captcha To Create A User Name On This Site?

8 pointsrickdale2 comments

I really like the simplicity of the sign up process on HN. But it got me thinking why do I always have to enter a captcha every where else and there is not one for the user name sign up on this site.

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One reason that I can think of is that a spam account here doesn't tend to get very far. Sure--they could spam the New Submissions list, but they'd have trouble getting upvoted and thus polluting the front page.

They could create a bunch of accounts that all upvote an article, but it's easy to detect articles that only get upvoted by low-reputation accounts as clear spam.

I guess the bottom line is that the reputation scores here provide a lot of high-quality signals for spam detection that a normal site wouldn't have.

because after signing up you can't do anyting. New users can only watch and comment. Their votes don't count. When a thread will be voted by some new users the thread will be killed and users will be black signed. After some days day can submit something. And the submitted threads are always controlled, killed or downvoted. Fake accounts simply can't spam.

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