Bypassing The Profanity Filter

[Howl's Castle]

I just wanted to say that people who "circumvent" the filter more than likely didn't mean to. Most people I know will **** the words instead of typing the full word. I don't see what is wrong with this.

(With all due respect)

 

[S.B.G]

It's usually best to type in the real word and let the filter censor it than trying to do it yourself with letters and characters. If the word is on the filter list then it will be censored. If it's not on the list it will appear and in most cases is okay to be posted.

 

[LizKat]

It's usually best to type in the real word and let the filter censor it than trying to do it yourself with letters and characters. If the word is on the filter list then it will be censored. If it's not on the list it will appear and in most cases is okay to be posted.

What to do when a posted link breaks due to the profanity filter having too good of an imagination?

I put up a link that the filter interpreted as an attempt to circumvent... it had this sequence in it

First part of sequence = how-to-patch-a-

Next part of sequence = hole-mend-a-seam-and-fix?slide=3384511
​

Yah, so that stretch of the link, after the filter ran, predictably enough comes out with asterisks

how-to-patch-******-mend-a-seam-and-fix?slide=3384511
​

So my temporary solution was edit the post and stick the original link in there with the word "something" substituted for the word "hole" and then told viewer to paste the link somewhere and fix it before using.

Is there a markup can use to get around this?

 

[D.T.]

Hahaha, I've been censored by the auto-parser several times for posting one of my favorite sci-fi writers, Philip K. Dick.

(it apparently is good with it now, hahahaha ...)

Side note, sorry, kind of off topic, but we wrote a profanity filter for a client project back in the late 90's, now that was a fun lookup table to populate

 

[LizKat]

Hahaha, I've been censored by the auto-parser several times for posting one of my favorite sci-fi writers, Philip K. Dick.

(it apparently is good with it now, hahahaha ...)

Side note, sorry, kind of off topic, but we wrote a profanity filter for a client project back in the late 90's, now that was a fun lookup table to populate

LOL. First you have to decide who the audience is, right?

Something like this happened to me before with the link to some news article I had wanted to cite... but it was a topical piece so I sought out another online newspaper that had put a different headline on it with a link that didn't trip the wire, and then just substituted a different quote in my post.

I should have asked back then in this site about the generic issue though. I knew what had happened the first time, but the workaround then was easy... now my laziness has caught up with me.

 

[S.B.G]

What to do when a posted link breaks due to the profanity filter having too good of an imagination?

I put up a link that the filter interpreted as an attempt to circumvent... it had this sequence in it

First part of sequence = how-to-patch-a-

Next part of sequence = hole-mend-a-seam-and-fix?slide=3384511
​

Yah, so that stretch of the link, after the filter ran, predictably enough comes out with asterisks

how-to-patch-******-mend-a-seam-and-fix?slide=3384511
​

So my temporary solution was edit the post and stick the original link in there with the word "something" substituted for the word "hole" and then told viewer to paste the link somewhere and fix it before using.

Is there a markup can use to get around this?

In cases like that where there is a false-positive it's best to send in a contact explaining it or perhaps tagging @Doctor Q and he can look into it and see about fixing it.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I've definitely ****'ed words intentionally doing my own censoring. Didn't realize this was against the rules? (Just to be clear, I put in stars for the swear word intentionally). But I don't do it very often, not more than 2-3 times in all my posts? I think the auto censor has censored my words 2-3 times.

 

[Doctor Q]

What to do when a posted link breaks due to the profanity filter having too good of an imagination?

That type of situation is pretty rare, and the word in question is on the profanity list for a good reason. So I'd do exactly what you did: explain the problem in your post, and tell people how to get the real URL.

An even simpler solution is to use a bit shortener like bitly.

 

[D.T.]

LOL. First you have to decide who the audience is, right?

Interestingly, we built a job/employer review system, on the web, in the *mid 90s* (way before most people considered that a viable option), the small-ish job board company was kind of ahead of things (and listened to us about this, but required all sorts of auto-curation), they were acquired by a moderate sized company (I believe HotJobs)and eventually consumed by the entity that would become Monster.com ...

We were ahead of the curve on quite a few things
[doublepost=1533068418][/doublepost]

An even simpler solution is to use a bit shortener like bitly.

That's always my go to for solving long and/or oddly parsed URLs

 

[Doctor Q]

That's always my go to for solving long and/or oddly parsed URLs

I'm especially un-fond of the Microsoft documentation pages with URLs of the form

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/something(123).aspx​

The parentheses are technically legal but in practice they confuse many other software products.

 

[LizKat]

An even simpler solution is to use a bit shortener like bitly.

That's perfect, thank you!

EDIT: worked like a charm. I used to shorten links all the time and got out of habit as assorted software became more accommodating of longer ones. Thanks again.

 

[D.T.]

@LizK Also, for convenience, there's a bitly plugin, so any URL can be converted on the fly (from the address bar), assuming you're OK with the required perms, available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox:

https://bitly.com/pages/tools

I was going to shorten the bitly link using bitly, but was concerned about creating some sort of ever shortening black hole ...

@Doctor Q I'm glad there's at least one other person that's cranky over MS's URL schemes ... (You kids get off my lawn!!)

 

[MBAir2010]

Im glad there are no corksuckers here who act like farging iceholes everytime thier new macbook pro turns into a big pile of sheet.

 

[LizKat]

In cases like that where there is a false-positive it's best to send in a contact explaining it or perhaps tagging @Doctor Q and he can look into it and see about fixing it.

I suddenly and definitely see the common sense in your reply.

 

[mobilehaathi]

I'm especially un-fond of the Microsoft documentation pages with URLs of the form

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/something(123).aspx​

The parentheses are technically legal but in practice they confuse many other software products.

That’s obnoxious. It’s like when people include white space in their file names. Great way to make this haathi cranky.

 

[LizKat]

That’s obnoxious. It’s like when people include white space in their file names. Great way to make this haathi cranky.

At least the encoding of those in URLs doesn't (usually, lol, although there could be exceptions) trip profanity filters, just throws random monkeywrenches into apps here and there. Maybe we should revert to 8-byte filenames while we're on a cleanup tour.

 

[AngerDanger]

I was going to shorten the bitly link using bitly, but was concerned about creating some sort of ever shortening black hole ...

Don't worry, URL shortening sites wont allow you to link to themselves or other URL shortening sites.

Trust me. I just wanted to make a web redirect loop.

 

[LizKat]

Don't worry, URL shortening sites wont allow you to link to themselves or other URL shortening sites.

Trust me. I just wanted to make a web redirect loop.

This thread should get locked before it become a recipe book...