

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

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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sblom
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.

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zeynalov
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.

