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The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

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Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#331

Post by CRConrad »

pjc50 wrote: post #254
marcus_holmes wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that just well-known in the UK though? I've mentioned this to people outside the UK and only occasionally have they known it.

Nobody outside the UK has heard of Scunthorpe because it can't make it through the filters. (There's a ridiculously large list of innuendo place names for tiny villages: https://anglotopia.net/ultimate-list-of-funny-british-place-... )

> Nobody outside the UK has heard of Scunthorpe

The Register has lots of readers outside the UK, and it has never shied from -- on the contrary, seems it positively delights in -- blowing this stuff up in its pages.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#332

Post by CRConrad »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #292
chrisdengso wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, I call this the "Clbuttic" problem. But nowadays it can be solved with machine learning fairly easy https://moderationapi.com/blog/moderate-text-automatically-u...

That's a slightly different problem from the Scunthorpe problem. You have a customer who gives her name as "Fanny Batter". Is that a permissible name? What about "Juan Kerr"? Or "Amanda Huggenkiss"? It's not about replacing "ass" with "butt", but detecting rudeness/humour in context. I'd be amazed if machine learning can solve this one. It's extremely hard for humans. * all those names should be rejected btw

> * all those names should be rejected btw

No they shouldn't.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#333

Post by CRConrad »

SergeAx wrote: post #123
tclancy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They figured that out on Ellis Island so yeah. Soundex.

Ellis Island is the one with that big green statue. What it has in common with Soundex?

Ellis Island in New York harbour (AFAIK) used to be the main immigration center for people arriving by ship from Europe, and is famous (among other things, I assume) for having originated some weirdly spelled names when the immigration officials who registered the newly arrived got it wrong.

Don't know if the GP meant that they had soundex, or that they invented it, but in any case it seems they would have needed it.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#334

Post by CRConrad »

randac wrote: post #230
beachy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to make sure random base64 didn't contain profanity I would have said "why bother" until this happened to us. A customer rang us up in a fury because some demo/ random data that we generated happened to have the word "penis" in it. They were convinced we must have put it there because we thought he was a cock. It was very difficult to defuse the situation.

I got a CAPTCHA variant not long ago that was along the lines of "U2KYS". Pretty toxic!

"You too kiss" is "toxic"? How? Or am I missing something?

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#335

Post by CRConrad »

delsarto wrote: post #219
phamilton wrote: post #34

We had to do this for a link shortening system (to make sure random base64 didn't contain profanity). It was a pretty fun problem. Not just the implementation, but doing the math to make sure it didn't make our shortened links easily enumerable. The implementation wasn't too bad, but we set up logging initially to spit out any random strings it decided to block. I demo'd this in front of the whole company and live ta…

In my help desk days I took a call from an irate person ranting about how we were telling her to "get a male sex change". Eventually I figured out she had become upset with "msexchange" showing up in the address!

Before Stack Overflow there was Experts Exchange. Their URL was of course those two words, all lowercase and mashed together into one... (Can't recall if they later inserted an underscore in between them?)

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#336

Post by CRConrad »

mgdlbp wrote: post #194
Agentlien wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it seems I don't have access to that page. Do I need to be a Wikipedia editor?

Ah, that's right—need to have had an account for four days and... to have clicked the 'Edit' button at least once? That's what the linked page says (I'm not familiar with Dutch Wikipedia specifics), but that seems like such a strange statistic to track instead of minimum edit count. So weird that I looked up how to configure MediaWiki autoconfirm requirements. They probably mean a minimum of one edit. Auto-confirmati…

> need to have had an account for four days and... to have clicked the 'Edit' button at least once

In the Dutch WP? Because otherwise I should qualify.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#337

Post by CRConrad »

formerly_proven wrote: post #171
talkin wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underscore matches any single char, so those patterns work fine. It’s an efficient way to match any small separator, like space, dashes, etc.

I didn't know _ is a metachar in LIKE expressions, thanks! Not the first time its syntax caught me off-guard.

It only has two, doesn't it? Underscore for "any single character", and percent for "any string of characters", AFAIK.

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#338

Post by exporectomy »

prawn wrote: post #97
exporectomy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're covert and only members of the group using them know what they mean, then why fight it? Seems like a helpful way to communicate about things that others might not like to hear. The paper you linked said that too - "Such signals may allow coordination and enhanced cooperation while also avoiding the alienation or hostile reactions of individuals with different preferences.". This happens all the time in car…

Because it encourages more of the same, and it's rarely completely covert. Often and increasingly, it's racial dogwhistling and just devolves every thread to wasteful, antagonistic and unproductive conversation. You might've heard the line/story about accommodating nazis in your bar.

Maybe dog whistling isn't the problem but just plain old whistling?

Re: The naughty username checking system used by Twitch

#339

Post by mgdlbp »

CRConrad wrote: post #336
mgdlbp wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's right—need to have had an account for four days and... to have clicked the 'Edit' button at least once? That's what the linked page says (I'm not familiar with Dutch Wikipedia specifics), but that seems like such a strange statistic to track instead of minimum edit count. So weird that I looked up how to configure MediaWiki autoconfirm requirements. They probably mean a minimum of one edit. Auto-confirmati…

> need to have had an account for four days and... to have clicked the 'Edit' button at least once In the Dutch WP? Because otherwise I should qualify.

Yep; the account for each wiki is automatically created the first time you visit that wiki, and rights are mostly local.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login

You can list your local accounts at

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth

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