We have been plagued with spambot new-member registrations on DetroitYES in the past year. Since we visually scan all registrations we have watched this grow to the point where about half of the new registrations were bot created.

These increasingly sophisticated programs have figured out how to read those annoying 'captchas' [scrambled letters on hard-to-read-backgrounds that seem to frustrate humans but not the bots] and simple question tests like 'how much is seven minus two'.

We have tried blocking IP ranges, primarily out of Eastern Europe and South Asia from where the majority originate, with little effect other than to annoy some genuine requesters or even current members and lurkers.

Downtown Detroit-based www.AreYouAHuman.com has figured out an ingenuous way to both foil the bots and make the human verification process fun.

Registrants play simple game like catching moving butterflies instead of birds or dragging a car instead of a piece of pie into a parking space. It makes one smile and proves their humanity. Since we applied it last week there has been no successful spambot registration.

If you go their website www.AreYouAHuman.com you will find a demo you can play, or try to register with DetroitYES and you will see it there.

So a big thanks from DetroitYES.com and kudos to Benjamin Blackmer, Co-founder of AreYouAHuman.com who has provided me details, and his team for this solution and for Making it Detroit.