Cannot register account in Mainland China (captcha)

Paulslouis · March 27, 2016

Hi,

When attempting to register account from within Mainland China the captcha field does not display (as Google is blocked in Mainland China), making it impossible to create an account. This essentially cripples the functionality of Zotero Standalone. Is there any possible work around? I teach academic writing to PhD students and they really need to set up accounts.

Thanks.

dstillman · March 27, 2016

Hmm, so it seems any site that uses reCAPTCHA has this problem:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23780387/recaptcha-availability-in-china

We can evaluate other options, but once you do have an account, how well does syncing with Zotero servers work in China?

Paulslouis · March 28, 2016

Syncing works absolutely fine once the account is set up, it's just the signing up that's the issue.

Paulslouis · April 17, 2016

Any developments with this? Just a temporary workaround would be fine, I just need to help my students get registered.

srk · May 9, 2016

Also having exactly the same problem as Paulslouis, in exactly the same context (teaching scientific writing to university students). Any chance of having a captcha provider that isn't Google?
By the way, syncing works fine for me too.

srk · May 8, 2018

Still no progress on this issue? My students are still encountering this problem.

fbennett · May 8, 2018

Does it work to have the account created outside of the national firewall, and provide the ID and password for use inside the well? (Not suggesting this would be satisfactory, but I'm curious about the contours of the barrier.)

srk · May 8, 2018

@fbennett As far as I know, that works, yes. The problem appears to be the CAPTCHA.

srk · October 31, 2018

Still no progress on this? Google's reCAPTCHA still causing problems for obvious reasons.

srk · March 5, 2019

Any movement on this yet?

dstillman · March 5, 2019

Yes, we made a change in January that fixed this for at least some people:

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/323947/#Comment_323947

Are you still having trouble?