I invited several my friends to join my website to help me build it, however they ALL reported they were unable to get past the CAPTCHA system (even after many attempts). Now, it should probably be mentioned that my friends are russian, and do not have a powerful command of english… However it was my understanding that wikidot aims to be international?
I tried to click through several captchas and it seems that the majority of them are really illegible. The funniest one looked like $R \partial_x\sigma\partial_x R$. Whoever wrote the system must have been joking! How ANYONE can enter symbols like that without going to the system character map?
Now on a more serious note, something should be done to accommodate users who are not native english-speakers.
Maybe make the font anti-aliased (it helps in recognizing symbols). Maybe make the captcha adjust to whatever language the user chooses (native alphabets are easier to recognize). Maybe remove the captcha system at all (you do require the email — and these cannot be generated in bulk, not on public servers at least).
