Ask HN: How to verify that a user is a robot?

1 points by mrThe 12 years ago | 3 comments

Strange question, but very interesting for me :)

So, you you wanna check, that user is NOT a robot - you can use captcha or something, that robots can't do well. But, if you need check, that user is a robot?

For example, we create some multiplayer game, were players will programming robots. [this just example, imagine, that we can't run user code on server]. In this case, user can create some UI for a this game and play game by himself. This is not good for a game balance and other game things.

So, we must check, that user is a robot!

We can send request like "calculate MD5 summ of this or that", but programmer can automatize only this part, and continue to play himself with UI.

So,how can we verify this?

ps. sorry for bad english, but i hope, you understand what I mean.

gus_massa 12 years ago |

Make them play 10 games at the same time. (Perhaps in different shards/worlds to avoid cooperation between the different “personalities”.)

mrThe 12 years ago | |

Nice idea. But in this case, i need to verify, that this is the same robot, because robot can do nothing, or play like a noob in first 9 games, but last game will be played by user through UI.

And you can't verify this, because there is different "worlds" and robot can be not so good, for solve some game problem in some random world.

gus_massa 12 years ago | | |

One possibility is to drop the best and the worst results, like in a diving contest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving#Scoring_the_dive

> To reduce the subjectivity of scoring in major meets, panels of five or seven judges are assembled. If five judges then the highest and lowest scores are discarded and the middle three are summed ...

Also, make them play 100 games, and drop 10 of them.

This may work if it is a fast paced game. If it is slow paced with a complex strategy, then a good player may play like in a chess simultaneous exhibition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_exhibition