#“I never knew reCAPTCHA was used to help digitize old books”
Yesterday on Twitter I jokingly suggested that Facebook’s CAPTCHA had a “sure that’s close enough” setting since there was no way I’d guessed the second word correctly. Then two people pointed out that the second word was optional. I was gobsmacked. Years of hitting refresh until I got a word I could read, followed by the stress of guesssing, wasted!
This morning John Keyes put us straight. Any site using reCAPTCHA is actually helping to digitize old books. The first word in each pair is known but the second is from a scan of an old book where they don’t know the word. If you guess first word correctly then there is a good chance you guessed the second one too. So they now have that second word scanned. I assume each word is given to multiple people to get a consensus.
What a simple but brilliant idea. From now on I’m gonna do my best on that second word but without the stress.