7 ms·

Why are many words censored? To take a completely random example (I just took one with many asterisks) where it makes the post completely illegible: https://www

Why are many words censored? To take a completely random example (I just took one with many asterisks) where it makes the post completely illegible: https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=soc.sexuality.general&g=79909&p=0 https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=soc.sexuality.gen... For an archive this is a big no-no. Respect the source material! Otherwise, thank you for the time spent doing this.

jolmg 6y ago
> For an archive this is a big no-no. Respect the source material! Though I'm also curious, that's perhaps not the tone I would have used when asking. After all, better a censored archive than no archive. I'm just speculating, but it may be the policy of usenetarchives.com, in order to accept their upload. Censoring seems to be done around email addresses, names, and offensive words. Perhaps, this is done to reduce the chances of people later asking for the posts to be taken down entirely. For example, I believe the takedown by Google of comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.forth commented elsewhere was done because there was offensive content present. The Google support request that mentioned that reason was taken down, but it's what I remember.
- jozefjarosciak 6y ago
  I've decided to remove bad word filtering and all other censoring. Let's see how it goes.
usefulcat 6y ago
For that example, it's at least fairly obvious why it was censored, but this one really puzzles me: "Getting good FP performance from a micro seems to require pipelining. Keeping the p<asterisk><asterisk>e(s) full seems to require a certain amount of parallelism and regularity." https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.arch&g=149653&p=0 https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.arch&g=14965... Edit: Ah, the irony. HN markdown causes two consecutive asterisks to disappear.
- jolmg 6y ago
  > For that example, it's at least fairly obvious why it was censored. Actually, it's not that obvious. It censored "Dirty Sanchez". I'm thinking it thought it was a person's name, and censored it for privacy reasons? > Keeping the p<asterisk><asterisk>e(s) full seems to I suppose "pipe" can have an offensive/sexual connotation. Even if it doesn't so much today, perhaps it did back then.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    My guess is that they just used a fairly large word list, which contained a bunch of euphomisms like Dirty Sanchez.
    - jozefjarosciak 6y ago
      A good guess, that's exactly what I did.
  - Jaruzel 6y ago
    IIRC, 'Dirty Sanchez' is a slang term for a sexual act.
  - glaberficken 6y ago
    "pipe" means blowjob in french. Maybe the filter dictionary is multilingual?
    - ben_w 6y ago
      It can happen. A decade ago, Apple’s automated App Store processes warned me that “Knopf” was a dirty word in German. (It isn’t: while “knob” can be translated as “Knopf”, the latter doesn’t have the anatomical meanings of the former).
- dredmorbius 6y ago
stevula 6y ago
For future historians, the post is about the sex act known as the “dirty sanchez”.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sebb767 6y ago
  This is not what I expected to learn today on HN
jozefjarosciak 6y ago
I am running it through a certain set of filters. From my SEO days I recalled that new websites are often penalized based on the certain keywords in search engines. Considering this is a new site, and there is 300 million plus posts and I am not able to read and moderate it, this is the best way I know of to deal with it. But perhaps you're right and I should get rid of it. I'll think about it. This is a valid comment.
- DanAtC 6y ago
  Please do not filter anything. A project of this scope is greater than any SEO issues you may have.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  One option is to censor by default for SEO, but have some checkbox that sets a cookie that uncensors it.
  - krsdcbl 6y ago
    This would be a really cool sulotion, kind of the reversal of typical seo bombing techniques that hide spam pages on compromised sites.
- bigiain 6y ago
  Maybe rot13 the words you think you need to censor? That'd be in keeping with the usenet tradition at least from the mid-late 90s when I was reading/posting heavily. And maybe add a simple javascript ROT13 widget so people can easily reveal it? (There was a time in my life when I could read ROT13-ed things pretty accurately in my head.)
  - stragulus 6y ago
    Double rot13 just to be sure.
    - bakul 6y ago
IncRnd 6y ago
Sigh. Whatever it says about you that the first place you looked was soc.sexuality.general, it is even more saddening that I knew all the words which had been redacted.
CGamesPlay 6y ago
Not a perfect filter: > On Oct 13, 11:36 am, "Colin" <Co...@DirtySanchez.b••t> wrote:
cakeplease 6y ago
It is also homophobic as the word "lesbian" is one of the words censored.
hunter2_ 6y ago
Some of us appreciate a good mask of asterisks.

jolmg 6y ago

> For an archive this is a big no-no. Respect the source material! Though I'm also curious, that's perhaps not the tone I would have used when asking. After all, better a censored archive than no archive. I'm just speculating, but it may be the policy of usenetarchives.com, in order to accept their upload. Censoring seems to be done around email addresses, names, and offensive words. Perhaps, this is done to reduce the chances of people later asking for the posts to be taken down entirely. For example, I believe the takedown by Google of comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.forth commented elsewhere was done because there was offensive content present. The Google support request that mentioned that reason was taken down, but it's what I remember.

jozefjarosciak 6y ago
I've decided to remove bad word filtering and all other censoring. Let's see how it goes.

usefulcat 6y ago

For that example, it's at least fairly obvious why it was censored, but this one really puzzles me: "Getting good FP performance from a micro seems to require pipelining. Keeping the p<asterisk><asterisk>e(s) full seems to require a certain amount of parallelism and regularity." https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.arch&g=149653&p=0 https://www.usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=comp.arch&g=14965... Edit: Ah, the irony. HN markdown causes two consecutive asterisks to disappear.

jolmg 6y ago
> For that example, it's at least fairly obvious why it was censored. Actually, it's not that obvious. It censored "Dirty Sanchez". I'm thinking it thought it was a person's name, and censored it for privacy reasons? > Keeping the p<asterisk><asterisk>e(s) full seems to I suppose "pipe" can have an offensive/sexual connotation. Even if it doesn't so much today, perhaps it did back then.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ehsankia 6y ago
  My guess is that they just used a fairly large word list, which contained a bunch of euphomisms like Dirty Sanchez.
  - jozefjarosciak 6y ago
    A good guess, that's exactly what I did.
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  IIRC, 'Dirty Sanchez' is a slang term for a sexual act.
- glaberficken 6y ago
  "pipe" means blowjob in french. Maybe the filter dictionary is multilingual?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    It can happen. A decade ago, Apple’s automated App Store processes warned me that “Knopf” was a dirty word in German. (It isn’t: while “knob” can be translated as “Knopf”, the latter doesn’t have the anatomical meanings of the former).
dredmorbius 6y ago

stevula 6y ago

For future historians, the post is about the sex act known as the “dirty sanchez”.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Sebb767 6y ago
This is not what I expected to learn today on HN

jozefjarosciak 6y ago

I am running it through a certain set of filters. From my SEO days I recalled that new websites are often penalized based on the certain keywords in search engines. Considering this is a new site, and there is 300 million plus posts and I am not able to read and moderate it, this is the best way I know of to deal with it. But perhaps you're right and I should get rid of it. I'll think about it. This is a valid comment.

DanAtC 6y ago
Please do not filter anything. A project of this scope is greater than any SEO issues you may have.
Thorrez 6y ago
One option is to censor by default for SEO, but have some checkbox that sets a cookie that uncensors it.
- krsdcbl 6y ago
  This would be a really cool sulotion, kind of the reversal of typical seo bombing techniques that hide spam pages on compromised sites.
bigiain 6y ago
Maybe rot13 the words you think you need to censor? That'd be in keeping with the usenet tradition at least from the mid-late 90s when I was reading/posting heavily. And maybe add a simple javascript ROT13 widget so people can easily reveal it? (There was a time in my life when I could read ROT13-ed things pretty accurately in my head.)
- stragulus 6y ago
  Double rot13 just to be sure.
  - bakul 6y ago

IncRnd 6y ago

Sigh. Whatever it says about you that the first place you looked was soc.sexuality.general, it is even more saddening that I knew all the words which had been redacted.

CGamesPlay 6y ago

Not a perfect filter: > On Oct 13, 11:36 am, "Colin" <Co...@DirtySanchez.b••t> wrote:

cakeplease 6y ago

It is also homophobic as the word "lesbian" is one of the words censored.

hunter2_ 6y ago

Some of us appreciate a good mask of asterisks.