On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 00:45:40 -0000 (UTC), Ken Cito
wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 16:36:10 -0700, Neill Massello wrote:

No, they're using you to do the OCR on words that stump their software.
You're doing the work that computers won't. But be happy: this means we
won't be terminated by our new machine overlords.

But how do they know what we type in is right?

You raise the question, This might be great for interpreting a portion
of text, which, when combined with other text that is readable, or
which was also interpreted using captcha users, makes sense.

But what about cases where a plurality or even a vast majority of
users give the same answer, what it looks like, but the answer is
wrong? I don't know. I haven't read the wikip page or anything
else, but I suspect they don't have an answer. There are a lot of
cases, many times in archaeology for example, where competent people
say, "It appears that...." Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately,
in the case of archaeology, often others will read those cautious,
proper statements and repeat what was thought likely as if it were
fact. Then people think the archaeologists said it that way, and it
makes them look bad.