"Words do not match"

[Stephanie]

I'm using NING for a class I teach, and the first class had no issues posting onto a discussion forum; however, my second class, who used the same computers, was met with a message that said "the words do not match" when they tried to comment on the discussion.  Only 3-4 kids from the second class were able to post anything.

 

What might the problem be?

[Tim]

A member of my network has complained of the same problem. Can someone help shed some light on this please. It's damaging my network when members can't post.

Thanks

Tim

 

[Eric Suesz]

Hi, Stephanie. It sounds like they were trying to sign up and weren't able to complete the Captcha. A Captcha is a very effective tool to prevent spambots from signing up and posting spam on social-networking sites. If they aren't able to complete a Captcha, they can choose an audio version and have that recited to them. I would encourage them to try again. Here's some info from our Help Center.

[Stephanie]

The Captcha doesn't even appear. Here's the other weird thing...Some of my students who were unable to post on the forum yesterday were able to do so today, and then others who could post yesterday were unable to do so today. So, I thought...ok, it's a computer issue. I let a student log onto my computer, and she was getting that same error message. I logged her out and tried posting myself, and it worked fine.

 

The next thing I thought was ok...something is wrong with their account, so we set up a brand new accoutn for them, and we ran into the exact same issue with the new account. This leads me to believe it's something with the website, ning...right? Or is there another cause/solution that I haven't tried??

[Eric Suesz]

Thanks for your patience, Stephanie. We have a really helpful page here that may help. We just added this article to help folks troubleshoot if they are seeing issues like this. My guess is that maybe this is a Javascript issue. Are these folks using different browsers by any chance? 

[Stephanie]

I have accounts who can literally NOT post when they use my computer, and I am always able to post. I logged myself out after posting, and tried having them post on a forum. It gave them the "the words do no match" message.

I had them create a new account, and they had the issue with the new account.