
Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads - Udo
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/captchas_to_keep_idiots_out_of_comment_threads/
======
raganwald
Here’s my test for whether you’re qualified to post to Hacker News.

Pair the following five comments with their corresponding definitions:

1\. “Raganwald is a blowhard whose pathetic attempts to score karma reveal him
as an insecure dweeb who can’t get over being kicked around in grammar school.
He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl like the
turds that they are.”

2\. “What, raganwald is talking about beauty in code? Have you seen some of
_his_ code? Ignore him.”

3\. “Raganwald sounds a lot like a Ruby fanbody, and we all know how _those_
people think."

4\. “Anyone who has spent that much time on Java clearly has no taste in
software and cannot be relied upon for sound reasoning. Ignore raganwald.”

5\. "Of _course_ raganwald would say that there’s something wrong with
Waterfall, he’s a Certified Scrum Master, he’s just pimping his own
credentials.”

And the definitions:

A. Fallacy: Ad Hominem Abuse

B. Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem

C. Fallacy: Tu Quoque (“You Also”)

D: Fallacy: Guilt by Association

E: Not a Fallacy: Insults

 _Example: 1-E, This is an insult, but not fallacious._

~~~
corin_
I know people smarter than the vast majority of HN users (how can this really
be judged, sure, but I'd place money on it, certainly far, far smarter than
me) who wouldn't know those, and I know many, many people who are damn smart
(just not fitting them into the "smarter than most people here", but
definitely smart enough to belong here if they wanted to) who also wouldn't
know them.

~~~
raganwald
I beg your pardon, I was trying to crack a funny. It seems it is impossible to
parody an extremist belief without somebody mistaking it for the general
article. I was attempting to parody the fundamentalist debating pedant point
of view.

Poe’s Law strikes again: <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law>

~~~
corin_
The depressing thing is I can imagine people _genuinely_ making the exact
suggestion you made, with no humour at all. Sorry!

~~~
Bud
Er, HN already does limit access via arbitrarily-chosen tests of user quality.
They just chose different tests. :)

I don't think it'd be a 100% bad idea to implement some sort of knowledge-
based testing, wire it up to varying levels of initial access/privs on a site,
and see what happens, as an experiment. User privs could then evolve once the
user had actually posted or commented or rated things.

~~~
eru
What are those tests? I haven't joined HN in ages (and then, only once), so
I'm not up to date on the current procedures.

~~~
moheeb
You have to come up with a username AND password!

~~~
pyre
Or remember your Facebook/Twitter/etc username/password.

------
DanielBMarkham
So people who are detail-oriented grammarians are necessarily good commenters?

Since when?

The assumption here is that you can tell a comment is going to be stupid by
testing whether or not the person understands homonyms. The only thing you
check with that is language ability. I'd argue you'd be better off searching
for common internet memes and cliches instead of original thinking -- since
that's a sign of a lazy or uninteresting mind. The author is kind enough to
inadvertently supply us with one "...If Fox Nation implemented something like
this, they’d have zero commenters..." But you could test stuff like this based
on any preconceived viewpoint, such as Obama-socialist, Obamacare, etc. The
use of shortcuts and blindly-repeated jokes and phrases is a good sign that
you're not going to be getting much from the comment.

Not sure how you'd code it, though, but I'm certain you could come up with
some semantic magic given enough input text. I'd imagine you'd use n-grams and
some Bayesian logic. You'd have to have a pre-existing corpus of the person's
writing, though.

~~~
corin_
They are homophones not homonyms - normally I wouldn't be so pedantic, but in
a thread around the idea of people having prove they know
meanings/spellings/etc, it seems suitible.

~~~
mirkules
Don't you think it's ironic then that you misspelled "suitable"?

~~~
shrikant
See Muphry's Law: <http://www.editorscanberra.org/muphrys-law/> :)

 _edit_ : Why can't I use an apostrophe in a URL? HN seems to be stripping it
out, so couldn't link to the Wikipedia page without a crufty "%27" showing
up...

~~~
nitrogen
_Why can't I use an apostrophe in a URL? HN seems to be stripping it out, so
couldn't link to the Wikipedia page without a crufty "%27" showing up..._

Interesting. It looks like ASCII character 27 is supposed to be valid within
URIs according to both RFC 3986 and RFC 1738 (via [0]). Maybe it's a simple
component of a system for preempting SQLi on other sites via links from HN?

[0] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1547899/which-
characters-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1547899/which-characters-
make-a-url-invalid/1547940#1547940)

------
boredguy8
As is often the case with these "I'm so smart and other people aren't" posts,
the author makes what I bet is an unintended mistake. I assume they want each
option to have only one solution. The last example ("It is poor form to ____
you temper in a discussion group"), either option (lose or loose) works. The
verb form of 'loose' means 'to set free', and temper has come to mean an
agitated state of mind. So you can say, "It is poor form to lose (be deprived
of) your temper (calm state of mind) in a discussion group."

But you can also say, "It is poor form to loose (let free from restraint) your
temper (agitated state of mind) in a discussion group."

~~~
ZoFreX
I don't think anyone would ever use loose in that manner without preceding it
with "let"? Feel free to correct me, but to me that sounds very wrong.

~~~
defen
Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is _loosed_ upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is _loosed_ , and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

~~~
jmilloy
A good poet knows when and how to defy grammar.

~~~
forensic
Except he isn't defying grammar. It's correct to use loose that way.

~~~
jmilloy
It's just that being in a poem doesn't have anything to do with being correct
or not, whether it is correct in this poem or not.

~~~
defen
OP said "I don't think anyone would ever use loose in that manner without
preceding it with 'let'". I provided a counterexample, so the OP's statement
is refuted. Now, granted anyone could write a nonsense sentence to refute any
rule of grammar. But this is a very important poem by a prominent poet.

~~~
jmilloy
I think that my comment came across as an attack. Rather, I just find the ways
in which poems can interact with and affect existing, seemingly fixed aspects
of language are beautiful and interesting! And in particular, it means that
poetry has a unique place in discussions about both proper grammar and common
usage.

You make a good point that you were furthering discussion about _common usage_
and not necessarily grammar.

------
raganwald
Am I to understand from the title that we are equating “poor spelling/grammar
in English” with “idiot”? Or is there some more subtle mechanism at work, such
as equating “can’t be bothered to stare at hard-to-read-text just to post
lulz, wat?” with “idiot”?

~~~
silverbax88
We are equating that after years of education, with the subject of English
(albeit American English) being a core class for EVERY YEAR of attendance, and
with spell checkers on most forum communities, that if someone still goes out
of their way to transpose "lose" with "loose", then, yes, they are probably an
idiot.

~~~
clstrfckr
*then

~~~
darklajid
I know this is not appropriate, but it made me laugh so hard.

I'm trying to write as correct as I can, but the GP just proved that these
mistakes happen to everyone, even the people that think that it might make
sense.

What about non-native speakers? Their point might be valuable, the
participation in a discussion really help- and meaningful, but still - these
now/know, there/their, you're/your mistakes are common. And not an indication
of intelligence.

Edit: Just to be sure here and kind of answering the posts below: Guys, I'm a
non-native speaker as well (in fact, my accent is terrible. I try to write as
decent as possible, but that's a different thing). So - my data point, without
any backing but my past experience, is that this is indeed an error that non-
native speakers do just as well. I didn't want to imply that non-native
speakers are idiots per se according to the criteria of this blog.

~~~
erikpukinskis
FYI, you write "correctly". The only thing, grammatically, that you can do
"correct" is "come correct", but that's an idiom.

~~~
klipt
Using adjectives as adverbs is incorrect in British English, but extremely
common in American English. For example:

"I'm doing good" instead of "I'm doing well" "He eats real fast" instead of
"He eats really quickly"

If enough people speak that way, I don't think you can call it "wrong" so much
as a dialect in its own right.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I wouldn't correct a native speaker. I was just offering, in case they cared.

Fast and good are de facto adverbs. Maybe in some American dialects it's
common to use other adjectives as adverbs, but not in mine.

Agree that language changes.

------
trotsky
_If Fox Nation implemented something like this, they’d have zero commenters
(unless, of course, they made the wrong answers “right”)._

I wholeheartedly disagree. I am pretty much a total idiot (based on many years
of evidence) and yet I can easily use the words listed correctly. The fact
that I espouse bizarre and unworkable methods of government (see my username)
certainly doesn't prevent me from spelling correctly. In fact, unworkable and
impractical ideas may be a significant indicator of post-secondary education.

I'm surprised to see such a thinly veiled insult directed at one set of
political beliefs sit at #1 on HN.

~~~
Udo

      I'm surprised to see such a thinly veiled insult directed at one
      set of political beliefs sit at #1 on HN.*
    

Things tend to sit at #1 on HN because they're interesting and engaging. I
didn't post the link because I wholeheartedly agree with it, and I suspect
that's not the reason why people upvoted it either.

That being said, I think the not-so-thinly veiled insult directed at the
average Tea Party clientele is backed up by casual observation. And that's
saying something, coming from a foreigner who has no stake in the US party
system (=me).

    
    
      I am pretty much a total idiot (based on many years of evidence) 
      and yet I can easily use the words listed correctly.
    

You're obviously not an idiot. You can articulate yourself, bring points
across in an eloquent manner, thus enriching the conversation. Compare that to
someone who only communicates in lulz or derrrp-speak. The point of having an
online discussion is not to surround yourself with people who agree with you
100% of the time, it's about having a stimulating discussion in the first
place.

------
o1iver
Not that that is a place where idiots are likely to venture, but I remember
this "captcha" for the Arch Linux forums:

    
    
      What is the output of "date -u +%W$(uname)|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'"?
    

(<https://bbs.archlinux.org/register.php>)

~~~
kevinpet
That's a nice one. A bit like "how many were going to St. Ives" or "what color
are the bus driver's eyes."

EDIT: whoops, I interpreted it as 's/\S//g', which I assumed would discard
everything.

------
mechanical_fish
If you don't want to hear from anyone who isn't a pedantic, highly literate
writer in English, that's your prerogative.

I, however, wish my Web had more input from illiterate people. There are a lot
of them -- the majority of the world, an overwhelming majority when you
restrict yourself to the English language. They have lives, thoughts, and
stories too. And if it weren't for recorded music, oral historians, and the
occasional documentary they'd be completely invisible in our media.

Of course, the average comment thread on the web is a terrible way to interact
with the literate and the illiterate alike. ;)

------
xd
Love the idea, but wouldn't it be simpler and more effective to just have them
fill in the missing word without the images.

~~~
dhimes
It would take much more proofreading to make sure the questions aren't
ambiguous. Look over ______. What am I thinking? U = {these, there, this,....}

~~~
xd
I thought that as well. Each question would need a good degree of context.

------
dbshapco
This seems to weaken the captcha for bots, since a simple Google search for
(for instance) 'do you know we are going' completes the sentence. No need to
defeat the obsfucated OCR test.

If the goal is to keep out some idiots (since these tests will admit 33-50% of
idiots who can at least complete the OCR test but answer the question
randomly) but permit moderately sophisticated bots, mission accomplished.

Providing more context to the captcha solution in general strikes me as
helping the bots, even if it confounds idiots.

------
51Cards
Seems to be a lot of serious comments about this when I believe the content
was created with tongue planted firmly in cheek. That said, a valid moron
captcha would be a wonderful thing in some places. It comes down to the old
saying:

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

------
Ygor
I am very good at failing standard captchas on many sites.

I always blamed Captchas as being to hard and not user friendly.

This title got me wondering - maybe it was by design, and I am an idiot.

------
Udo
In my experience simple, domain-specific CAPTCHAs work pretty well. They don't
even need to include a frustrating image with hard-to-parse words. Just ask
commenters a somewhat randomized question that any visitor to the site would
be able to answer easily. It can be really, really simple - like for example
asking them to enter the abbreviation for something:

> _Whats the abbreviation commonly used for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol?_

This weeds out bots (because they generally don't bother with site-specific
stuff) and many trolls (because they are either to stupid or to lazy to go
through this process).

~~~
joelthelion
That would work well provided your site isn't a high traffic site.

~~~
Udo
Yes. The lower traffic your site is, the easier you can make the captcha. The
truth is, most of us have pretty low traffic sites with no more than 100k hits
per month, blogs for example. The key here is to have a simple _but different_
captcha compared to the standard stuff. Pairing this strategy with a little
bit of site-specific domain knowledge goes a long way towards discouraging
trolls and idiots.

I think overall, bots would be negatively impacted by a more diverse captcha
ecosystem even if the individual implementations are easier to crack. Spammers
don't invest 10 or 20 minutes in cracking a domain-specific captcha system
just so they can spam one single blog - they'd rather move on to thousands of
sites that are protected by the same standard word reading puzzle. Of course,
if your site rises into the upper strata of the web, you're also quickly
entering a zone where the standard, hard-to-decipher image strategy isn't
working so great anymore either.

------
dabent
This is an interesting concept, but won't keep out comments from the
reasonably educated, but devious. Those often are the worst kind. It's usually
possible to simply down vote puerile comments into oblivion, but one
intelligent troll can waste considerable bandwidth.

------
Jupe
At first take this seems like it would be easy to circumvent, (given a
dictionary of homonyms) but...

google "look over there." == 1.5M hits

google "look over their." == 16.2M hits

google "look over they're." == 1.0M hits

Google doesn't support periods, apparently. But, other examples from the
article are a little more easy to game:

google "do you know were we are going?" = 8 hits

google "do you know we're we are going?" = 0 hits

google "do you know where we are going?" = 6.1M hits

------
Jach
I know ESR isn't really popular here, but:

"Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language
skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate,
ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself)
will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy
thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong and we have no
use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to."

I still try to read through poor writing, but the comment has to contain
something fairly insightful for me to get over a "then/than" mistake. That
said I think a Naive Bayes classifier for "sloppy" and "not sloppy" would work
better than this captcha system. Not to mention it's super-easy to get around
by a bot, and getting rid of bots is the point of a captcha in the first
place.

~~~
Luyt
_"If you can't yet write competently, learn to."_

Excellent advice.

Ayn Rand wrote: "If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but
to learn."

------
pr0filer_
So, i can be a d*ck as long as i'm smart?

Edit: I'm disturbed by the amount of grammar nazi's here that think the
quality of someone's grammar reflects their personality...

If the goal is to keep the conversation civilized, why not do something along
the lines of "Doing X is a more nice thing to do".

~~~
xd
I don't think it's really about being smart. Having a basic grasp of language
so you can adequately articulate yourself in a conversation is critical to
discussion. If you can't, then you probably shouldn't be taking part in the
discussion anyway.

Too many people will spill there emotions into a discussion with sub standard
spelling and grammar which makes it very difficult for others to understand
them, which leads to inevitable misunderstandings.

~~~
raganwald
The grammar issues presented on this page are picayune distinctions with very
little potential for major misunderstandings. Getting them correct is more of
a social signal than anything else, like eating salad with the correct fork in
some places and not eating food with your left hand in others.

I have real trouble imagining that a good point made with substitution erros
is somehow less critical to the discussion than a poor point that doesn’t
confuse it’s/its.

~~~
xd
In simple social situations that may be true. But not being able to grasp the
basics of language will have an effect on how someone communicates complicated
thoughts and ideas.

How would you expect someone taking on a programming challenge of say, an
operating system, without the basic understanding of boolean logic to fair?

~~~
cromulent
"fair", or fare? Those damn homophones ;)

~~~
xd
Thanks for pointing that out, now I'm one step closer to infallibility ;)

------
Luyt
Still a 33% failure rate. And oh, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM>

------
MatthewPhillips
This makes me wonder how much AI development is done for nefarious purposes.
Someone's going to crack this and then they're going to have to make a more
intelligent captcha system. Some day we're going to have strong AI and
spammers will be thanked for it.

~~~
darklajid
If you haven't read this, please check out Cory Doctorow's story on exactly
this point.

First link I could come up with:
[http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/pester-
power...](http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/pester-power-by-
cory-doctorow-with-a-little-help-chapter-11/)

------
desaiguddu
i like this idea..! I am planning to open source my CAPTCHA research if any
one interested please contact me ..! you can find my research on
<http://dndcaptcha.blogspot.com/2010/04/textareaid.html>

You can find presentation of the same concept here:
[http://www.slideshare.net/desaiguddu/drag-and-drop-
captcha-a...](http://www.slideshare.net/desaiguddu/drag-and-drop-captcha-a-
better-approach-to-captcha)

If anyone of you are researching or preparing Survey presentation or
educational research on CAPTCHA feel free to use the content from the
presentation.

------
gmac
This made me smile, but I don't think it would work. I suspect a lot of people
could use the right form when asked outright like this (and as a last resort,
they could Google it). The bigger problem is probably when people _don't care_
whether they get it right or not when they're writing their comments.

[Pre-submit verification of 'there' homophones . . . . 100%].

------
Revisor
Via via via via...

The original source is here

<http://www.defectiveyeti.com/iacaptchas/>

------
joeyespo
The problem is there's a good chance of measuring the wrong thing.

If you need to pass a test to post, sure you'll keep out a lot of bad
comments. But you'll also limit the pool of acceptance. There could be plenty
of people who fail the test having something positive to add. Standardized
tests prove this. There are those who are lousy test takers but end up being
very successful. Also, certain topics might be easy to answer with someone
with sufficient experience in the subject without requiring even average
intelligence.

So this limitation might increase the quality of posts, but also adds a kind
of tunnel vision to the site.

------
BasDirks
Idiocy is not the privilege of bad spellers.

------
chc
The best Captcha IMO is just to write up a set of questions about the article.
Actually reading the whole article and absorbing the details is a reasonably
good predictor of comment quality.

------
tokenadult
The better idiot screen on any discussion forum with a well defined subject
scope would be a factual knowledge test. But the factual knowledge test
wouldn't maintain the existing community if the existing community already has
"hivemind" about factual issues central to the forum's subject, contrary to
fact. I wonder what we would all consider the subject scope of HN? Are there
any issues on which the HN consensus about the facts of the real world might
be contrary to "objective" fact?

------
jgeerts
The funny thing is that the smart captchas are easier for a computer to guess
(if it wasn't a joke).

Too bad that the current implementation of captchas ever saw the light, they
are pushing a security issue to the end user. Seems like a good opportunity
:).

The acronym is "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart" but it isn't really that automated, so do captchas actually
exist?

------
sedachv
This IMO is something that Disqus or Quora or similar systems should jump on -
automated techniques for knowledge base quality management. I can see taking
some of the existing essay grading software, combined with something like
these captchas, being used to produce customer support knowledge bases from
input from technicians and discussion forums.

------
abend
Might be effective at keep the idiots out, but not the bots. The challenge
sentence should not be in straight-up HTML.

------
alecbenzer
this would also seem to discriminate against people who aren't native english
speakers (or w/e other language).

~~~
darklajid
Reminds me of a common beginner's problem if you're starting with German:

Who is 'Wer' in German

Where is 'Wo' in German

Trivial, but I see lots of people (and sometimes myself) falling for this
trap.

~~~
drv
It happens the other way around too (German to English), and sometimes you end
up with non-words like "somewhen". It's an interesting exercise to determine a
writer's native language by the oddities of their writing.

------
kilburn
I am a non-native speaker, and to me it looks like the second captcha is
wrong.

According to what they've taught me, it should be _"Do you know _____ are we
going?"_ instead of the proposed _"Do you know _____ we are going?"_ ,
shouldn't it (notice the _"we are/are we"_ swapping)?

~~~
drv
No, "Do you know where we are going?" is correct; however, without the "Do you
know", "Where are we going?" would be correct.

~~~
kilburn
Thanks, it totally makes sense now. _"Where we are going"_ was an affirmative
(sub)sentence because the interrogative is already expressed in the "Do you
know" part.

------
Uchikoma
(non native speaker)

In 20% of my HN comments I need correct "there"/"their", "buy"/"by" [...]
which I write down correctly when re-reading my comments, but subconsciously
write incorrect the first time when I do not think about the words but the
thoughts.

------
tokenadult
Does noticing whether a link is the original link

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/captchas-for-keeping-
id...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/captchas-for-keeping-idiots-away)

or blogspam count as a useful screen?

------
roser137
I think, This seems to weaken the captcha for bots, since a simple Google
search for (for instance) 'do you know we are going' completes the sentence.
No need to defeat the obsfucated OCR test.

------
sqrt17
a cloze test (i.e. some text with a gap for a word) would do very poorly in
filtering out bots, as they're much easier to do automatically than captchas.

------
emehrkay
The page loaded a 500 and I thought that it was some sort of gag or that my
understanding of HTTP response codes was lacking.

------
spc476
I liked the method the USENET group alt.hackers uses---it's moderated, but
there's no moderator. Good luck in posting.

------
nraynaud
(Non native english speaker) isn't the verb "to go TO" and the whole sentence:
"Do you know where we're going TO?"

~~~
andrewaylett
"Do you know where we're going?" would be what most UK speakers would say, and
"Do you know to where we are going?" would be an archaic variant which implies
a location is requested rather than an action. The verb used is "to go"; the
answer might be "[we are going] to London" or "[we are going] shopping".

There's some potential for confusion in that the verb "to go" can be used for
the future imperfect (I think, I was only taught my tenses in French and
German lessons) as well as the present tense: note the difference between "We
are going to London" or "We are going shopping" and "We are going to go to
London" or "We are going to go shopping", or even "We are going to shop". The
former is talking about an action we are currently undertaking (to go:
implying motion), the latter about a future intent (to go: expressing an
intent to do something in the future) to carry out the action in the former
case. Using a different verb: "We are riding a bicycle", compared to "we are
going to ride a bicycle"

~~~
nraynaud
Thank, good one with the shopping.

------
ambler0
Unfortunately, grammar captchas like this would keep out a lot of second
language learners as well.

------
mey
several problems that need to be addressed. Non-native speakers would be
arbitrarily penalized. This is very easy for a computer to crack. (small
choice selection, systems to do grammatical checking have been around for a
long time.)

------
jhuckestein
Do yourself a favor and read the comment thread on that post.

------
erikb
Also keeps (some of) the non-mothertounge speakers out.

------
__rkaup__
I don't get it. How come this article has not been flagged to death? How come
this article has over 100 comments? Am I missing something?

------
steins
those would be pretty easy to solve with a bit of code

------
tomelders
Hands up if you were especially careful when commenting on this post?

------
n1ck4n
He's missing this one

Fill in the gap: a) it's b) its

"The hacker got access to the server and killed ... processes"

lolz

~~~
burgerbrain
The problem with this one is that at one point in the English language's
history (17th/18th century I believe), the correct possessive form of "it" was
"it's", which is arguably more correct^.

^You make nouns possessive by adding a saxon genitive to signify the distinct
possessive-izing "s" sound. The word "it" is also made possessive with this
same sound when spoken, but for the sake of a contraction (read: abomination
;)), we have decided to arbitrarily remove the saxon genitive and replace it
with a simple "s". The excuse for this inconsistency is _"well it is a
pronoun, not a noun, so this is not an inconsistency"_ does not take into
account that English is a language primarily spoken. Written English, where
reasonably possible, should approximate the spoken constructs.

Demonstration:

    
    
      He stepped on the cat*'*s tail.
      He stepped on its tail.
    

Notice that although these two sentences are expressing the same idea and are
of the same approximate form (they would be spoken similarly), the second has
dropped the saxon genitive. This is clearly, if you look at it ignoring what
you were taught in primary school thanks to Webster worship, an absurd change.

 _At the very least_ , people who use saxon genitives with the word "it" do
not deserve the ridicule people like to heap on them. "it's"/"its" is _not_ a
"there"/"their"/"they're" scenario.

~~~
corin_
I disagree, I think it/it's is completely comparable. Sure, there's a long
history to it, but it has evolved, and there are two reasons why it is
comparable.

First, we weren't alive back when "it's" was used this way. Nobody currently
alive was. There's no argument of "they're doing it the old way", because it's
not even in living memory. As of the current standards, and those of the past
200 years, they are simply doing it the wrong way.

Second, it can't even be argued that they are confused because of the old way.
Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's. The reason people write
it's is nothing to do with the possesive apostrophe, it's purely because of
confusion with the "it is" contraction.

~~~
burgerbrain
You seem to misunderstand me: I'm not suggesting that people use "it's"
because they aren't up on the new conventions, or even that "it's" is better
because it is the old way. Rather, I am simply suggesting that the old way _is
better_ (for the reasons stated above).

I object to the assertion that people are accidentally inserting "it is" where
they mean possessive "it". Certainly people such as myself who are strongly
verbally oriented type the saxon genitive reflexively to reflect the spoken
possessive-ization construct. In a similar way, I also very commonly
"improperly" insert commas in my sentence to signify pauses instead of using
them merely syntactically.

Furthermore, I maintain that "its"/"it's" is _not_ equivalent to
"they're"/"their"/"there". The difference between the first is purely
convention, while the second set of words are only related to each other
incidentally.

 _"Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's."_

Actually, I do quite often.

------
roser137
interesting...

------
hugh4life
What would an anti-hipster Captcha look like?

<http://www.dangerousminds.net/contributors>

~~~
colanderman
What does that link have to do with your comment or the story?

~~~
desaiguddu
thats why the Smart CAPTCHAs are needed !

