Not sure what they are complaining about - worked for me first time around. I think some people might have problems with:
- Entering lower case text instead of caps
- Not knowing (and not willing to find out) "who is the current maintainer".
IMHO people should be able to figure those out with sufficient information and hints. And bots.. well they are not welcome on the forum anyway <g>
It took me about five tries to register for the forum several months ago. The reason is simple: aging eyesight. I have problems with captchas in general, but I have to say that some of the ones used for the forum are especially difficult to see because the background of the image also contains letters and number, and it is not always obvious which letters and numbers are supposed to be "right" ones.
One thing I have found helpful on other sites that use captchas is the ability to click on a link to change the image if I can't decipher the one I'm presented with. The login page at www.thebox.bz is a good example of what I mean.
I agree that the question about the current maintainer is probably part of the problem, but it's not necessarily that people don't know the answer--a simple typo will be interpreted as a wrong answer. I'm a teacher, and I sometimes give computer-graded quizzes, but when I do I avoid short answer/fill in the blank questions for precisely that reason.