Comments on: Spammy RSVPs?

Question: Spammy RSVPs?

Tehhund — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:39:37 -0800

Using a Google Form for wedding RSVPs - are we going to get spammy submissions?

We're using a Google Form for our wedding RSVPs. And thanks to a previous question, I'm making it dead simple - 1 page with name, yes/no, guest name if you're bringing one. (Please no responses about whether an online form is good etiquette, or suggestions about how to design the form - those decisions have been made. Comments about how to design the form to prevent spam are welcome if that's possible.)

My one concern is spam. The form will be accessible from our publicly-available wedding website (bridenamegroomname.ourwedding.com). Are we likely to end up getting spammed? i.e., are we likely to have troublemakers or some kind of bots submitting bogus entries? If yes, how many - a couple, or hundreds? Is that a problem that's common with publicly-available Google Forms?

We don't want to password-protect the Form because a) I don't know how to do that b) I don't want to deal with inevitable confusing and lost passwords c) I'm totally on-board with URLs on an invitation, but I have an irrational aversion to putting a password on the invitation. We'd have to find another RSVP site instead, which is not ideal (though if you think spam is an inevitable problem, suggestions for which site to use are welcome). And restricting it to certain people/accounts is not really an option, because not everyone has a Google account and we're not asking our aunts to create Google accounts just to fill in this form.

So given that we won't be password-protecting the form, are we running a significant risk for spammy responses?

By: mercredi

mercredi — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:41:00 -0800

I've used google forms on public pages and have never gotten spam, FWIW

By: Infinity_8

Infinity_8 — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:50:15 -0800

Have you considered a captcha for response submission?

Difficulty: lots of people are very very confused by captchas. Maybe you can make a clever one, like a game: "Enter IRSVP here:"

I wish you joy in your upcoming life.

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:56:40 -0800

We used a google form for our save the date--without a password--and did not get any spam.

By: Potomac Avenue

Potomac Avenue — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:33:23 -0800

You're not going to get any spam. Google Form pages are searchable.

By: rockindata

rockindata — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:41:42 -0800

We didn't get any spam on our google form RSVP page

By: Infinity_8

Infinity_8 — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:02:01 -0800

Oh -- sorry -- looks like you can't use CAPTCHA in Google Forms.

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:05:39 -0800

I have been using google forms for collecting author affiliaitions for years. These go out to hundreds of people and I have never once gotten one spam entry.

By: bleep

bleep — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:23:31 -0800

I used a google form for my wedding RSVPs.
I did a really simple homemade captcha where the question was something like "What's 7+1?" with a validation on that field. So a human will know to enter "8" and proceed but a bot will not be able to proceed. I didn't get any spam and nobody found it confusing.

I also used that form to collect other useful information I wanted to gather like favorite pizza toppings and when are you going to be leaving and arriving.

By: bleep

bleep — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:27:24 -0800

Sorry, I misread, disregard my last sentence.

By: telophase

telophase — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 14:10:59 -0800

I put our Google reply-to form up in January for our April wedding with no password or any other form of protection, linked from our wedding website, and to this day it hasn't received any spam--I just checked.

I should probably get around to taking it down!

By: guster4lovers

guster4lovers — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 16:27:37 -0800

I use google forms daily for hundreds of entries, and I've never had spam, even though they are publicly searchable and posted on my websites.

If you're really convinced it will be a problem, you can have multiple pages before the submission button. Then at least there's an extra click.