Words And Profanity Filters
By Shikha
@shikharava (1838)
July 17, 2017 7:27am CST
Quite recently I posted my experience on being spammed. Well, there is nothing like being spammed with 15 e-mails in a day, I guess 
While I was posting that, there came a time when I couldn't post my discussion on MyLot at all. I thought that it might have been due to some technical reasons — some implementation error, maybe 
, which I wouldn't know of. I'm a travel writer, not a software engineer
So I became a little worried. I clicked on the Start Discussion button at least 5 times, but there was no response. Then all of a sudden I saw a message appear below the button.
It was in red and it said, "Error: Cannot Post. Fix Bad Words: ..."
When I read that message I found that I had written an expletive, of course unintentionally, in my post.
I searched for that word and then I came up around a sentence or two where I had mentioned about a cafe which was also a snack bar. I had used a term which literally meant words like, in addition, also, etc.
But it seemed that the profanity filter had interpreted it as a word which had something to do with the male bodily fluid... Hush now!
You can confirm the same by looking at the image above, if not already done.
I am not that into biology yet, but I could understand that because it was a programming implementation that had understood...erm I'm sorry, that had interpreted a word completely wrong, my post was not relayed. It was not intentional on the profanity filter's part either, I guess ...just like me.
This shows how a common decent word, that has nothing to do with something something, is held wrong by a profanity filter that interprets words but fails to understand them, because it lacks human understanding. That really gives us humans something to celebrate about. Does it not?
What do you think?
While I was posting that, there came a time when I couldn't post my discussion on MyLot at all. I thought that it might have been due to some technical reasons — some implementation error, maybe , which I wouldn't know of. I'm a travel writer, not a software engineer
So I became a little worried. I clicked on the Start Discussion button at least 5 times, but there was no response. Then all of a sudden I saw a message appear below the button.
It was in red and it said, "Error: Cannot Post. Fix Bad Words: ..."
When I read that message I found that I had written an expletive, of course unintentionally, in my post.
I searched for that word and then I came up around a sentence or two where I had mentioned about a cafe which was also a snack bar. I had used a term which literally meant words like, in addition, also, etc.
But it seemed that the profanity filter had interpreted it as a word which had something to do with the male bodily fluid... Hush now!
You can confirm the same by looking at the image above, if not already done.
I am not that into biology yet, but I could understand that because it was a programming implementation that had understood...erm I'm sorry, that had interpreted a word completely wrong, my post was not relayed. It was not intentional on the profanity filter's part either, I guess ...just like me.
This shows how a common decent word, that has nothing to do with something something, is held wrong by a profanity filter that interprets words but fails to understand them, because it lacks human understanding. That really gives us humans something to celebrate about. Does it not?
What do you think?3 people like this
3 responses
@polyxena (2628)
• Sturgis, Michigan
18 Jul 17
@shikharava At least I'm not alone haha
1 person likes this
@shikharava (1838)
•
17 Jul 17
Even switching auto suggestion off won't work
The profanity filter is the feature of the site.
1 person likes this
@spaceseed (2843)
• India
17 Jul 17
@shikharava I am not sure which kind of filters they have used. I Have worked with one site and my role wast to test profanity filter checking as well as software test engineer. so I am not sure if they have implemented correctly or not
1 person likes this
@pumpkinjam (8540)
• United Kingdom
15 Oct 17
I've had that happen to me before. I can't even recall what the word (it may even have been just part of a word) was but it was something which was, or so I thought, perfectly innocent! There are also occasions when there has been something wrong with a word I've used and I've had to look up its meaning because I'd had no idea it meant something other than what I thought it meant.
It's a good thing that these profanity filters do, as they should, pick filter profanities but it only detects a particular word and not the context which, to a human, would be clear. I suppose a programme which does a more detailed profanity check might be too complex.
