Q:

Question captcha bypassed

I just answered a question and on clicking "Post Your Answer", nothing happened. I copied my answer, reloaded the page and tried to submit it again; then it asked me to enter a captcha "Verify that you are human". I dismissed this message by hitting the "X" in the top right corner, hit "Post your Answer" again and the answer got posted without me entering captcha code.
Is this a bug?
Not sure whether I can reproduce because it is the first time in over a year it asking me for a captcha ....

A:

It sounds like the first time you attempted to post, the submission was successful, and the acknowledgement got lost (well, in a TCP connection, delayed for an exorbitant number of retries, which is the same from the user's perspective).
The second time, you failed a check on the server for multiple answers submitted within a short space of time, which is one of the triggers for the CAPTCHA.
You failed the CAPTCHA, your duplicate post was cancelled, and after returning to the question you saw your answer for the first time, concluding that the CAPTCHA was ineffective somehow, while in fact it was the original attempt succeeded, not the CAPTCHA-protected one.
It's human nature to ascribe effects to the most proximate action, but sometimes that's a bad assumption.

