I try to go to in game help using F1 and am punished with not only lack of knowledge but additionally with a captcha.  I fill out the captcha and nothing happens.  It just stays completed.  I can't access online help.  I can't access the Adventurer's guide or recipes.  Is this because of bots or something I am doing wrong?  Why is in game help locked behind a captcha?

THere used to be a bot problem on the website, and sadly the in game website get the same protections with the captcha... It affects a few people, you are one of these unlucky ones.

With "a few people" I believe you mean the few people who still try using the homepage.

If you go to your settings in game

ESC --> Settings --> Interface Settings --> UI Hotkeys

you can set the crafting notes to a key. It used to be F2 before they introduced the Adventurer's Board.

I have mine set to = on my main crafter.

I still get the captcha when I set the hotkey to open the Crafting Notes.  And the Captcha doesn't progress.  After I complete the picture task, the captcha just stays there with the check mark.  It doesn't load the next page.  I even reinstalled Windows today to try to get around this issue and no correction.  I don't understand why the ingame help is blocking me from accessing it or how I can access it.

When I click on the hCaptacha Icon, the Privacy, or the Terms link.  Nothing happens there either.  I did a virus and malware scan and found no issues.  Is there a suggest program I can use to scanning?