why can I not post the word mancheste (r)?

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goldse
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Feb 26, 2014 3:44 pm

why can I not post the word mancheste (r)?

Post by goldse »

So I was just about to post a forum entry, when the site tells me the word "mancheste" (leaving out the r because the site will probably scold me again) is a banned spam word. Also the word for the opposite of expensive is banned, telling me:

Your message contains banned spam words. Please rephrase your post without the following words: chea (p missing)

What. The. Heck ?!

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adafruit_support_mike
 
Posts: 67454
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: why can I not post the word mancheste (r)?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Huge. Google. Target.

We have a large and well-respected online presence, so there's a whole world of link spammers just itching to fix that. They can win in sheer volume of submitted posts, but their vocabulary tends to be predictable. We have a filter that monitors word frequencies and blocks words that rank as strong discriminants for spam.

All filters produce false positives and negatives, but our filter's stats are pretty good. The second-chance feature (asking you to choose another word) is another part of the filter. Spambots aren't smart enough to reword a message, and the humans who plant links won't spend the time. They get paid for volume rather than subtlety.

Think of it as a second-order Turing test. Not only do you get a chance to prove you're human, you get to prove you're a human who actually has something to say. ;-)

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