Most sites have a captcha check on forms where users can
contribute input such as comments or forum posts. However Stackoverflow have added some twists to
this otherwise standard mechanism - one sophisticated and one...
not so sophisticated (but very humorous).
The sophisticated: By default there is no
captcha - but if they cannot determine whether you are man or
machine when you post your question/answer, they redirect you to
the captcha page.
The humorous: Instead of just confronting the
user with a standard captcha form, they have added a picture which
must have been a lot of fun shooting, along with the following
refreshingly down-to-earth text:
Are you a human being?
We apologize for the confusion, but we can't quite tell
if you're a person or a script.
Please don't take this personally.
Bots and scripts can be remarkably lifelike these days!
Enter the CAPTCHA displayed below, and we'll be out of your
way.
... great stuff.