Bizarre YBW swear filter...

Rivers & creeks

Rivers & creeks

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I was making some inane comments on the ensign thread and missed out a crucial letter in the word flag and ended up falling foul of the infamous YBW naughty word filter. Seems the 'mericans are taking this anti-smoking thing very seriously.
 
I came across one "swear" filter that rejected the word specialist, making it spe******t. It was happy with viagra and Scunthorpe though.
 
nigelmercier said:
It is obviously blocking the word as they believe it is derogatory to gays. Strange, as one of my (many) gay friends often refers to his female companion as his "***-hag" ☺
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I think 'owning' a derrogatory word is considered OK, like black people and the N word. It is when other people use it that problems start. It is quite funny when it is an Americanism though as they find some of our ordinary words rude and some of our rude words ordinary.
 
There's a request to borrow a cigarette in colloquial English that couldn't have a more different meaning in American.

Mind you in American the phrase "good value sailboat" translates into UK English as "How much is RCD compliance?"
 
I've been playing with the swear filter in another place. You can have some fun with them.
However, you can add "wild cards" before and after the target word using an * which prevemts the target word being disguised or used in the plural.
So the Scunthorpe example may have that applied to avoid any work-arounds.

Why the swear filter has the *** word I really can't imagine as it's only a moment's work to alter and save yourself looking like a proper dunce. Unless, of course, the bosses who we are assured don't control things, have in this case insisted.

Cue denial from John or Richard.
 
I was once a moderator of an English boating forum that would insist on translating 'cockpit' into 'thingypit'.

We fixed it of course, and now it speaks boat-language unfailingly correctly....
 
I LOVE the way you always blame the Americans! The American owners we have had since 2001, longer than most on here....do you honestly think they take an interest in what you can and can't say!

The swear filter has not been touched in YEARS and I mean years until about 8 months ago when it was relaxed...

I believe the admin staff take the view that if its not acceptable in title then its not acceptable on here.

Seems fair to me but then again I am just a normal law abiding citizen who believes strongly in common sense..
 
Champagne Murphy said:
Poor old Scunthorpe
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Back when forums were in their infancy one of the most popular football websites had a truly eccentric swearfilter that used to append / bowdlerise anything it thought was an obscenity into a more socially acceptable / polite form. It was also set up to look for nested and compound words; so everytime Scunthorpe came up it was appended to sfrontbottomthorpe.

Although I suspect the forum admins were having a bit of fun...
 
prv said:
Well, there has to be some American to blame in this case, even if not the particular ones the OP has in mind. Who else would think that "fag" is a rude word?

Pete
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I am not sure thats in the swear filter? even if it is I cannot believe it was put there on the instruction of an American, lets get real here!

I am going to check
 
Well it is in there, it's in there because it was being used in the "American" way in the lounge too often despite warnings not to.

So user generated ban on this occasion!
 
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