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Comment by hobs | Hacker News Reader

Anyone here surprised? No? I didn't think so. Reposting because I know someone else is about to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

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It's not too hard to mostly fix the Scunthorpe problem by generating word lists: shitake, oshita, acunto... and don't forget that Dikshitar and Dikshit are (high caste) Indian names.

The problem is that it's far more trivial to bypass the filters than it is to make the filters work well and not have false positives.

Consider: sh1t, cu|\|7, a55, f00ker, and so on and so on.

Plus you have to constantly update to take into account new slang which can have double meaning. Some kid might say "she's just a thirsty ratchet" and there's no way in hell that a simplistic automated system is going to be able to flag that as being a use of expletives or filthy and derogatory language.

I wasn't proposing fixing any of those problems, just the Scunthorpe problem! You are correct that there are more problems out there.

I find it humourous looking at some oldschool grep commands that grep for 'username' and 'password'... but the first letter might be capitalised, so you grep for 'sername' and... 'ssword'. Because 'assword' is too rude for code, apparently...

you forgot "the N-word" they say in the media. It's white people getting away with saying the n-word.

This joke's got recursion![0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935041

I tried to create email id for one of my interns "harshit" and my email provider outlook.com didnt allow me to do so.

> Dikshitar and Dikshit are (high caste) Indian names.

I'm sorry, I know it's impolite, but I chuckled and nearly spilled coffee on my keyboard.

Fair enough, but remember that this cuts in all directions. Some common English names, words and abbreviations can be rude in other languages, e.g. "Dole", "lul".

Happens everywhere :-).

Here in NZ, it caused quite a stir. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Henry_%28broadcaster%29#Sh...

One of the biggest Starcraft progamers is known as Jaedong (realname is Lee Jae Dong) everywhere, but can't use this nick in the game client..

It's okay now, my mates and I just call him JaeKong after this years performance...

Note for those reading: that says pro-gamer, not programmer.

In Iran the Wikipedia page for Dick Cheney is blocked, as well as anyone else with that first name. Way to go Britain!

In the early days of the BBC they referred to the Dutch cities of Rotter and Amster.

The clbuttic mistake.

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