Question: Some days ago, the spam protection was turned up a notch.

Unfortunately, it overshot the target by far. Now, as soon as I make two edits in close succession (which happens *often* – I’m sloppy), I am presented with a “human verification” and a **totally unreadable captcha.** It takes an average of five reloads to get a marginally readable one, and even then I’m guessing (and sometimes guessing wrong).

Please tune down the filter, or at least switch to a readable captcha.

In fact, wasn’t there previously a rule that once contributors had enough reputation, they’d be trusted not to be bots? Did that get switched off or am I remembering this wrong?

Answer: 
![very annoying!](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Sgrl.png)

Really?!!?!!

Granted I was on a friend's PC, not logged in... but there's got to be better alternative to captchas.

Wait, maybe it should have been `tbckno seems` with a **b**
I didn't notice *any* CAPTCHAs on here for over a year until today, and the irony of the one below wasn't wasted on me.

I think the difficulty of the CAPTCHA is a separate issue to *why* they are being shown. Surely the purpose of a CAPTCHA is exactly as described - to differentiate between robots and humans. So the fact I saw one meant the SO algorithm thought I might be a robot with high probability. Why?

I posted a normal question at my first attempt (no rapid edits) from an established account using my normal machine on my normal IP at a normal time of day - it seems more like a pre-emptive strike rather than a calculated guess that I'm a bot.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hNxjD.png)