You Can't Even Write a Person's First Name Without Violating Ts and Cs!
By timetravel
@timetravel (1425)
United States
December 30, 2011 6:39am CST
Oh my goodness - I went to post something about my new year's plans watching D*ck Clark and gang and I couldn't post it because of the first name! When is MyLot going to realize what is a name and what is being taken in context that violates ts and cs?
1 person likes this
5 responses
Sometimes I see discussion contain name but not deleted.@timetravel (1425)
• United States
30 Dec 11
What do you mean, change the way I write? I was trying to write a legitimate first name - a very common nickname for the name Richard. Perhaps MyLot could add a feature where we could check something to indicate a word is being used as a real name and we are not stating something inappropriate.
1 person likes this
@timetravel (1425)
• United States
30 Dec 11
I get you now - put the initial of the nickname before the full first name. I know what the word can be interrupted as - but you'd think in the context of certain sentences it's obviously a name, not a rude term.
1 person likes this
@varier (5685)
• Indonesia
30 Dec 11
Wow, I just recently knew that myLot filtered the word "d*ck" - replace * with "i".
I got this kind of notification:
"The following word or words violate myLot's terms of use: d*ck
Please reword your submission and try again."
Well, it can't be helped. That word can be misused for rude things. Then it's better to filter it..
And anyway, it is not easy to implement contextual filter, like "when it's in this sentence, then it should not be filtered and in other sentence, it should be".
Implementing that things would be really complicated and take a lot of hard efforts.. So filtering all the "d*ck" word would be the best choice, I believe.. :)
1 person likes this
@timetravel (1425)
• United States
30 Dec 11
Okay, but really - how do you write a legitimate name then? what if someone here has a husband with that name? Or a son? Best friend? A t.v. show I love - Mad Men - Don Draper's real first name is "D**k". So this filter leaves out the chance to talk about certain t.v. series, too. I'm just saying....a bit ridiculous.
1 person likes this
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
30 Dec 11
hi yes timetravel I had to do some innovating when I posted that I loved to watch the D.i. c.k. Clark show on New Year's eve.That is a private first name why cannot they work around the vulgar slang term as we are nmot using it in a vulgar way at all.
@beki710 (949)
•
30 Dec 11
I think it's very hard when you create a content filter for it to realise what context it is being used in. I suspect that although yes is is a first name it is more often used as a vulgar slang word and that is why it gets caught in the filter. If it didn't you know there would be people complaining when it didn't get filtered out when it was used in a dirty way!
1 person likes this
@timetravel (1425)
• United States
30 Dec 11
True, people would complain, but it seems to me MyLot is fairly good at deleting posts that violate the ts and cs here - there must be something imbedded in whatever software is used to achieve this. Perhaps there is some way to adjust it in order to let real names through?
1 person likes this
@megamatt (14292)
• United States
1 Jan 12
Yeah, context can really be a difficult thing to figure out for sure. I mean, there are a lot of people named that first name. I'm sure many of them have gotten flack given their similarity to a name of something else. Then again, there are a few words that are mostly innocent but really mean something sorrid in a certain context.
Someone who is going to figure out how to code a filter that takes context into mind when typing certain words will likely be able to make a million dollars off of something like that. There are just going to be a lot of times where context is rather going to be a hard one to really figure out. And it is unfortunate that this small flaw exists but its hard to read the thoughts of a person as they are posting.
@timetravel (1425)
• United States
1 Jan 12
And they say there are no opportunities left for inventors! Not true!
