Or I could just get a life and read fewer blogs

So have you voted yet in my poll?

Yes, that poll → → →

I have been cursing blasted word verification hell daily for the last few months.

I was getting SOOO fed up with it. Then yesterday, @badassgeek tweeted the following

to which he got quite a few replies saying "but what about the spammers" so he rephrased it a little like so

Which got me wondering how many people out there actually need captcha in the first place. Hence - poll.

I used to have craptcha on my comments as well, because I didn't even know it was there, and I didn't know you could turn it off. I'm guessing quite a few people out there have it on for that reason. If so, dear person whose blog I read and comment on, please try turning it off for a while and see what happens? I turned mine off a while back, and I've since had five spam messages. Five. Easily ignored, not such a big deal. And not much trouble for me to deal with compared with making it much more annoying for people to comment.

I have noticed that the most popular blogs don't have it on, so I wonder how they deal with spam. Surely they get more of it, yet don't feel the need to inflict eye-stab inflicting boredom upon us. (Yes, I'm using the old "the cool crowd don't do it" argument. Whatever works, right?)

Obviously there's a reason this whole thing exists. Fair enough. If turning off captcha means you get hundreds of spam messages, please do leave it on. But does it for most people? And where's the line in the sand? How many spam messages are too much and warrant annoying your lovely readers? I am genuinely curious, not (just) having a go at people with captcha. What do you think? (And will you please switch it off if you don't need it? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?)

- I'm sure this post is bad blogging karma. I'm going to get spammed so bad this week I'll have to turn the blasted thing back on myself. -