There's this song I know whose chorus is:

Eat bite fuck suck gobble nibble chew,
Asshole hair-pie fingerfuck screw.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:40 PM by James D. Macdonald

See, I knew that if I wanted help with my profanity, I should ask a sailor.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:41 PM by abi

If there are issues with the word testicle, then perhaps scrotum and ball-sack might be considered? My son, who is 'In the Army Now', would definitely use those instead of testicle(s) although he probably wouldn't spell them correctly.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:47 PM by Dawno

*Thatcher*

*except post mortem

Posted August 21, 2008 4:48 PM by Tykewriter

the tendency of some users to express an excess of emotion

This sounds like the kind of comment that shows up in my yearly review.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:49 PM by Serge

Abi, if 'felching' isn't on your list, it's not half a list, if you know what I mean.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:50 PM by James D. Macdonald

Depending on your level of sensitivity:

sphincter; butt-hole; arse; douche (and compounds thereof); sperm; cum; -wad; kyke (alt. of kike); feces; mofo and mo-fo; homo; lezzie; shite; fuk; fukker; carpet-muncher; fudge-packer; a-hole; tosser; pansy.

Also, do you want to curtail IM speak with inappropriate additions, such as WTF, GTFO, STFU, and the ever-popular ROTFLMFAO?

Posted August 21, 2008 4:52 PM by pedantic peasanr

Jim @#1

S'funny.

I know one that goes:

Shit, shit, damn, damn.
Son of a bitch.
God damn.
Highty tighty
Christ Almighty.
Shit, shit, fuck.

Learned it at a Girl Scout camping trip, of course. Sung to the tune of "Hey Ho Nobody Home."

Posted August 21, 2008 4:53 PM by Sarah S

If you're including "hell", "sex", and "fetish" on there--"damn" (and "goddamn(ed)" and possibly "godsdamn(ed)") would probably fit too.

If I understand the asterisk properly: hell (as part of, frex, shell), butt (button), boob (booby, booby-trap), horny (thorny), kink (skink), and tit (interstitial), at the least, should also have one.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:56 PM by Gwen

'Yid' seems borderline - and after reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union I nearly began using it myself - but I'll suggest it.

As for the UK additional, given that 'paki' is there I'd say 'chinky' could be added as well.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:57 PM by Tracey S. Rosenberg

And if you add 'felching' you probably want to add 'fisting' and 'fisted' as well.

If you can do pairs, curtailing 'bite me,' 'suck me,' and 'lick me' (and same words with with 'my') is probably also a good idea.

Posted August 21, 2008 4:57 PM by pedantic peasant

asshole --> trou de cul

Posted August 21, 2008 5:03 PM by Serge

Is "anal" really that bad? I suppose if you can't talk about vaginas, though, body parts are out. In which case you might want to add "breast" to the list ("bosom" as well?).

Also, you might want to allow variations on "shit," because some people can't seem to remember that "Shiite" has two i's.

The list reminded me of a scene from the dance class I took in high school (a lot of us took it to get out of phys ed, including a couple of guys). One day the teacher gently asked us to please try to refrain from saying "that sucks" in her presence, as to someone of her generation it meant a certain kind of sexual activity. Most of us blushed or snickered. One girl, however, looked puzzled, trying to figure out what it could mean, and finally blurted out "You mean, like, oral???" The rest of the semester everything in that class was "oral." Lose your book bag? That's really oral. Trip on the stairs? Man, that's oral. Etc.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:04 PM by Liza

whore --> pute

Posted August 21, 2008 5:04 PM by Serge

You're going to have to come up with a list of compound words involving the ones you want to match only as stated, because people will think creatively. Append "licking," "eating" or "sniffing" to the nouns, for example.

Also, things like "carpetmuncher," "hobag," "slore" (slut combined with whore).

You may also want to add "turd" and "crap" if "poo" and "poop" are going to be considered off-limits -- I consider both of the first two stronger than the second two.

If "penis" is off-limits, shouldn't the full word "clitoris" be off-limits too?

And the full word "faggot" for the American list at least.

I can think of several words that can contextually be problematic, but that are used the same way in non-problematic contexts (like "screw" and "slit" and "nail"). Don't know how to handle those.

(Do you know that Making Light is the only place, online or off, where I still blush at this kind of language? I don't even know why. But I am sitting here turning pink, and I'm pretty sure it's the sex-related words -- the ugly slurs just make me mad, they don't embarrass me. I haven't blushed about sex since I was sixteen.)

Posted August 21, 2008 5:05 PM by Caroline

Most of the text that I'm trying to filter will be one-word or multi-word tags. There is some space for connected prose (quick reviews), but very little.

We're going to have to tweak our stemming engine (ironically, based on the snowball algorithm) if we're going to optimize this stuff and reduce false positives. As things stand, if I block "fisting" I'll lose "fist" and all tags that use it. Still working on the balance there.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:06 PM by abi

Are these words anathema in all circumstances, or are legitimate uses allowed?

bitch is a female dog
dyke is what keeps the water out (or in)
cock is the partner of a hen
pussy is my cat
poop is the high bit on the stern of a ship
kink is something that happens to a wire rope
tit is a small bird
et cetera, et cetera

Posted August 21, 2008 5:07 PM by John Stanning

I'd love to pitch in, but I've been watching "Deadwood" of late, so my sensitivity level is rather high. Or low, depending on your fucking point of view.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:08 PM by John

12-- 'Bite my...' and so forth, would be overkill, though, unless there were a way to only catch those collocations in the imperative.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:09 PM by Evelyn Browne

Oh, and I'd love to contribute to Naughty Words of the Past, but many authors won't play ball. cf. one of my favorite lines in Thackeray, from Vanity Fair, ch. 21:

“————!” burst out his father with a screaming oath

Posted August 21, 2008 5:09 PM by Tracey S. Rosenberg

So. Your company doesn't anticipate further business in Scunthorpe, Essex, Sussex, or Clitheroe; not to mention Cockfosters or Milford. Nor is it Janus-faced.

(Note that these locations are merely those that spring to mind; I don't have a grelpable list of place names or surnames, but it's astonishing how many "rude words" show up as substrings of nouns, especially in Yorkshire.)

Hmm. Some improvement warranted here, methinks ...

Posted August 21, 2008 5:09 PM by Charlie Stross

The way our stemming works, "clit" blocks "clitoris" and "fag" blocks "faggot". Thus the asterisked terms, as explained below the table.

Many useful suggestions to consider. And on the Internet, no one can see you blush. Remember that.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:09 PM by abi

abi @ 16... We're going to have to tweak our stemming engine

"Captain! The engine can't take this anynmore!"
"Scotty! I need that (bleep!) power now!"

Posted August 21, 2008 5:11 PM by Serge

Coon

Spearchucker

Junglebunny

Towelhead

Jigaboo

Slut (possibly)

Hooker (possibly)

Dyke

Lezzie

Lesbo

Kike

Gyp

Jap

Dago

Spic

Chink

Haji

Camel jockey

Sand nigger

Ball busting

Castrating

Man hater

Man basher

Feminazi

From a post by ginmar, which happened to come up on my friends' list just after this post. [Warning: contents include justified bitterness which may be unpalatable for certain readers.]

Personally, I think that if adults are going to be using the software for general social communication, we must be permitted to use formal Latin terminology for body parts & things one does with them.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:11 PM by Doctor Science

Clit should have an asterisk, at least if any linguists are ever going to use this software. (Clitic, enclitic, cliticization...)

Posted August 21, 2008 5:12 PM by Evelyn Browne

shirtlifter, turdburgler, brownhatter?

But please don't think me ginger (beer)
If I give you a zinger here;
You'll never stop a Cockney rhyme
Whose basis varies over time.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:12 PM by Phil Palmer

Jim @ 1 and Sarah @ 8:

The two I once knew were:

(as a vulgar, tit for tat response to profanity): "Watch your fucking language, what the hell do you think this is a goddamn playground?"

and

"Twat you say? I cunt hear you. Never mind, give me a minute and I'll finger it out."

Abi:

Another pair: 'blow me,' and 'jerk off.' Also blowjob, tramp, slit, faggot, and afterbirth.

Possibly: Nazi, jackass, testosterone, estrogen, PMS, and menstrual.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:13 PM by pedantic peasant

You might want to add motherfucker

Posted August 21, 2008 5:13 PM by L Lindsey

Not to mention Cockermouth. (A personal favourite.)

Posted August 21, 2008 5:13 PM by Tykewriter

Also, according to Wikipedia: "Other ethnic slurs like coon, porch monkey, Alabama porch monkey, afrodite, sausage lips, tar baby, darkie (African-American), dottie (Indian/Pakistani)[citation needed], chink, gook (Asian), beaner, wetback, spic (Hispanic-American), guinea, wop, dago (Italian), honky, gringo, cracker (whites), heeb (Jewish), kraut (German -- used especially during World War II), sand nigger, raghead, towelhead, "rug merchant" (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like fattie, retard, and redneck or hillbilly aren't entirely profane at all times, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially acceptable in polite settings or social situations."

Bastard and prick also made the December 2000 "Delete Expletives" paper, higher on the list than bollocks, arsehole, and paki.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:13 PM by Gwen

Also, according to Wikipedia: "Other ethnic slurs like coon, porch monkey, Alabama porch monkey, afrodite, sausage lips, tar baby, darkie (African-American), dottie (Indian/Pakistani)[citation needed], chink, gook (Asian), beaner, wetback, spic (Hispanic-American), guinea, wop, dago (Italian), honky, gringo, cracker (whites), heeb (Jewish), kraut (German -- used especially during World War II), sand nigger, raghead, towelhead, "rug merchant" (Sikh, or Arab in the US); and pejoratives like fattie, retard, and redneck or hillbilly aren't entirely profane at all times, but can be considered very offensive when used in the company of certain people, and not socially acceptable in polite settings or social situations."

Bastard and prick also made the (British) December 2000 "Delete Expletives" paper, higher on the list than bollocks, arsehole, and paki.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:14 PM by Gwen

And Penistone is down my neck of the woods.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:16 PM by Tykewriter

Oh yes, and are we forbidden to discuss
the country to the left of India
Winnie the Pooh
any kind of assessment or analysis
Shropshire Partners In Care (SPIC)
?

My advice: forget it. There are more words in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your stemming engine.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:16 PM by John Stanning

Gwen,

In general, I think it'll be hard to block terms that are made up of innocent words in unfortunate combination (rug merchant, for instance).

But I am sadly out of date on ethnic slurs, so thanks for the list. I'll make good use of it.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:20 PM by abi

Also: would you be confused if I called you a fukcing cnut? Or just offended?

The mark one human eyeball comes with a built-in real-time spelling checker.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:20 PM by Charlie Stross

An episode of The Two Ronnies featured a list of banned words, including
Kn*ck*rs
Kn*ck*rs, and
Kn*ck*rs

Posted August 21, 2008 5:22 PM by Tykewriter

Ho. (As in "Your sister's a ho!")

Which will keep Santa from using one of his favorite expressions, alas.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:23 PM by James D. Macdonald

John Stanning @33:
You'll note that I'd rather not stem certain words, precisely to allow discussions involving Pakistan and Winnie the Pooh. Thus the asterisks.

Although there will always be a proportion of people smart enough to think around a stemming engine and a blacklist, there will also be a larger set of vandals who can't think of anything more creatively profound than "fuck this damn shit".

The trick is to find a balance. This list is part of the quest for that balance.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:24 PM by abi

Mr Stross: only if my name was Cnut.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:24 PM by Tykewriter

Well, there's always (in no particular order):

pr0n variation of porn
smeg and smegma
spooge
rimjob
Jeezus
upskirt
gangbang
faggot
queerbait
raghead
gook
darkie
dago

variations on "tit" like "titty" in order to exempt words like "titmouse"

Contextually, "nip", "chink", and "mick", but that's hard to differentiate. Combinations like "rusty trombone", "dirty Sanchez", or "snail trail" would also be troublesome.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:25 PM by dolloch

Abi:

Not sure what your software function is here. Some of these, while inappropriate out of context might be essential if one is running a medical business, an animal breedery, or similar.

Also, as Caroline @ 15 said, people will get creative over time.

If this is something to clean and filter e-mail or 'net chatter, then this may work well enough to stop and make someone stop and think when it gets bounced, but if someone is determined to be offensive, there are inordinate options available that won't be blocked, even before you add in creative thinkers:

toss my salad, tripod, eiffel tower, cum dumpster, ATM, etc.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:26 PM by pedantic peasant

A ban on rude words doesn't preclude rudeness; it merely requires ingenuity to work around the ban. And once the flamers get the message, they'll gear up.

"I'm not saying you're a drooling, inbred cretin, but your family tree is a linked list, your mother is your sister, and you voted for Bush, twice."

Posted August 21, 2008 5:27 PM by Charlie Stross

Not only residents of Scunthorpe, but also those of Milford, will be excluded. Discussion of cooking will be difficult if one may not mention spices. Perhaps "milf*", "spic*", and "hell*" (I just noticed) would be more correct entries, or am I misunderstanding how the pattern-matching is done?

Posted August 21, 2008 5:28 PM by ed g.

James @37:
Slightly off-topic, a common Dutch interjection is "hoor", meaning roughly, "you hear?" Unfortunately, it is pronounced "whore", which makes it startling on occasion.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:28 PM by abi

pedantic peasant @41:
Library software, filtering user-entered tags, list names and short reviews in public and university libraries.

These lists are "seed" lists, just to get our customers started. It is expected that they will be configured over time.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:32 PM by abi

Do socio-economic terms count, or just racial ones? Thinking "chav" for the UK Additonal list.

Also... Making Light is always thought-provoking, but I think the time is particularly ripe for some introspection when I can read a list like that and think "what will be left for people to talk about on that service?"

Posted August 21, 2008 5:32 PM by Charity

You won't be able to repress British profanity, as it is endlessly creative and allusive. See Roger's Profanisaurus, Viz magazine, Urban dictionary, Carry On films &c.
That said, you should add 'wog' to the British list. You should also consider 'retard' as a noun.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:33 PM by Kevin Marks

Not forgetting, of course, the Lithuanian Typewriter... and the many other euphemisms for verbs of a carnal nature such as shag, root, monster, bonk, knob, and (if you are the Duchess of Marlborough) pleasure ("His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots").

Posted August 21, 2008 5:35 PM by ajay

An excellent social engineering hack that Christy Canida came up with was to have such a list, but to present the error message as "your comment didn't pass our spell-checker - the word 'whore' was not recognised"

Posted August 21, 2008 5:37 PM by Kevin Marks

Oooohh!

'Retard' is a good one. See also moron, doofus, bastard, and idiot.

Also, (I forgot if this was mentioned) crap, and -crap [as in bullcrap, horsecrap, etc.]

Gee Abi,

47 comments in an hour. Not the fastest fill-up, but certainly up there. Why do you think this one is so popular? ;)

You come up with the best stuff for us ....

Thanks!

Posted August 21, 2008 5:40 PM by pedantic peasant

Too bad peaceday/peaceguy chat went away with Katrina.

It had some sort of 'bad language' algorithm and thus: a member's last name was Hitchcock it would appear as Hitchrooster, if someone said 'cocksucker' it came out as 'roosterlollipop'.

I am not sure what it translated other things as because if it decided you were swearing, it would warn you once, then bounce you out of chat the second usage of a bad word.

Once it kicked you out, you had to make up a new user id/password.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:40 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Seriously, the answer they want is "human moderation." There is no software answer to the problem posed.

Retired sailors would probably make a good choice for who to hire as moderators.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:40 PM by James D. Macdonald

Didn't we just have a thread on a related topic? Oh yes - “No,” he said apartmently.

And by the way, any software worth its salt should be able to distinguish between the word cunt and the same string of letters embedded within the word Scunthorpe.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:41 PM by John Stanning

Dese bomboclaat lists too raas exclusive.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:42 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Abi: You missed 'wog', and 'nig-nog' on the UK list. They were such joys in my childhood.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:43 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I will offer the insult, "skank," as a possibility. Though, this may be confused with a dance of the same name. (I'm not sure if this is US specific.)

Posted August 21, 2008 5:45 PM by Joe J

Fragano @55:

I'm weak on racial insults in general, and British ones even more than American ones. I blame living in Ediburgh, which is one of the whitest cities I have ever seen.

I'll add those in.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:46 PM by abi

You might want to add "nigga" to the US list; it's a fairly common spelling these days. Or maybe I've been playing too much "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" this week.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:47 PM by mjfgates

Jim @52:
I'm also involved in designing our moderation interface, including a tool to see what extant tags a given term would exclude. The blacklist is only a tool to assist the moderator, not a substitute for one entirely.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:48 PM by abi

pedantic peasant @50:
47 comments in an hour. Not the fastest fill-up, but certainly up there. Why do you think this one is so popular? ;)

I attribute it to the kind and helpful nature of the Making Light community, of course.

Thanks!
You're welcome. Having spent the entire day in a language exercise, I felt obliged to share.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:50 PM by abi

It seems from what has been leaked that the primary concern here is in an environment where you're filtering out offensive tags that people have applied to things with this software.

Given that, I am surprised to see "penis", "vulva", "vagina" and "testicle" on the list; the whole point of many of the rest of the other words on the list is that you don't use those real terms when being vulgar.

Asking as a matter of the policy you've been asked to help implement - should tagging a medical article "penile cancer" be disallowed? What about tagging an article "vaginal yeast infection"? The current list happens to allow one and exclude the other, unless your stemming engine is pretty smart.

I'm saddened that your engine would deem a tag of "gay" offensive, but I suppose that it is often used in a rather offensive manner as a tag. I might ask that you add "diaperhead" to the list, though maybe you should wait until the users of your company's product prove themselves that creative. Also "dego" and its variant "dago".

Posted August 21, 2008 5:51 PM by Daniel Martin

I note that I was able to write a line that would have got me arrested and fined in several English-speaking Caribbean countries, without abi taking notice.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:51 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Here are a few more:

fellatio, for unlawful carnage knowledge (speaking of creative thinkers, I actually got that as a response once: "Here's a buck, for unlawful carnal knowledge with yourself." [Apparently a higher-order thinking breed of troll]), masturbate, simian, cunnilingus (from college: "I heard you had a talented tongue and were a cunning linguist."), banging, balling, 'do me,' 'eat me,' pervert, feeb, snatch, tampon, skank and skanky, hooker, prostitute, roundheels, ATOGM, and jism.

[This list brought to you as further proof that teachers learn as much from their students as they teach -- whether they want to or not.]

Posted August 21, 2008 5:51 PM by pedantic peasant

If I may quote from my alma mater's unofficial drinking song:

Penetration, fornication, copulation, fuck
Blow job, hand job, rim job, ream job, cunnilingus, suck
Eating beaver, dipping wick, taking it up the rear
These words don't mean a thing to me, 'cause I'm an engineer.

(to the tune of "Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech")

Posted August 21, 2008 5:52 PM by Seth Gordon

You may encounter problems if people need to use proper names in the software. "Dick Cheney" may be a swear word but hopefully "Dick Van Dyke" is not.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:52 PM by Mary Dell

Racial epithets? Monty Python's recommendations against being rude to...

Posted August 21, 2008 5:53 PM by Serge

Those people?

Posted August 21, 2008 5:56 PM by Tlönista

Abi:

You will update the list when alls been said and done, so we can all have access to "The Official Maaking Light Profanity Guide," right?

Posted August 21, 2008 5:56 PM by pedantic peasant

Next, Mrs.Slocombe and her pussy...

Posted August 21, 2008 5:59 PM by Serge

pedantic peasant @68:
You will update the list when alls been said and done, so we can all have access to "The Official Making Light Profanity Guide," right?

If you like, yes. But it must be understood that no such list is perfect or comprehensive, even in its intended context.

Posted August 21, 2008 5:59 PM by abi

"Anal," even though it's meant to be used just as is, could cut out compound medical terms. Of course, the only one I can think of right now is "anal probe," which may not make my case.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:00 PM by Karen Williams

Well, George Carlin had a little list. And sure enough, "motherfucker" doesn't appear on any of the lists.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:01 PM by p mac

bloody
sod
sodding
poof
pansy
fudgepacker

Isn't bloody more offensive than USians tend to think?

Posted August 21, 2008 6:02 PM by Mark Wise

It sounds like I may want to move more of the technical medical terms to the second list, which contains terms we'll suggest to libraries in more (socially) conservative communities.

All of the terms here are configurable and removable, and new terms can be easily added. This is just a suggested starting point before each library optimizes its list to its community (and the standards of its moderators).

I just want it to be the best starting point possible.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:04 PM by abi

"fuck" catches "motherfucker"

Posted August 21, 2008 6:04 PM by abi

Another of the great example of getting creative was the John Goodman Saturday Night Live referee sketch ten or twenty years ago where Goodman was playing the ref, and he was doing a press conference with a group of fans and they were all very politely calling him the names they would in the stands as press-type questions.

The one I recall best is Kevin Neelan's:
I'd like to invite the ref to have sex with himself, because that's what he can do, as far as I'm concerned."

Posted August 21, 2008 6:06 PM by pedantic peasant

Going the other direction from most of the comments here, I'd have to contest "kink" being on those lists. In my everyday usage, it's far more commonly associated with a defect in a hose (or other similar situation) than with sexual kinks. "Kinky" may be a different matter.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:10 PM by Brooks Moses

"Santorum" (google for it)

Posted August 21, 2008 6:20 PM by Josh Jasper

@ Josh Jasper #78
Unfortunately, that particular Google bomb has died out. However, might I direct you to the Santorum.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:23 PM by Pablo Defendini

Alas, I cannot you help you here, but allow me to tell the story of the day I wished to look up some details about the Achaemenid Empire on a public library's internet computer:
It was strangled by a clumsy filter that would not display any older texts (the kind commonly found for free online) that dealt with ancient Persia and contained the word "Aryan". Bah, I say!

Posted August 21, 2008 6:24 PM by Jörg Raddatz

Over at Asimov's, (where incidentally, the Moderation Gods have awakened from eons-long slumber & the atmosphere has been cleansed), the profanity filter was easily evaded by use of spaces or non-alphabetical characters, e.g. 'c oc ksu cker' or 'a/n/a/l'

Posted August 21, 2008 6:24 PM by Soon Lee

Perhaps I should tell you the story of a large retail chain that started down this road and ended up really pissing off a Mr. Phuc Yu of Van Neys, California.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:29 PM by sburnap

Under "UK additional" you could add "slag", "scrubber" and "slapper" which are are all roughly synonymous with "slut". Also maybe "poofter" and "woofter" which are variant forms of "poof".

Posted August 21, 2008 6:33 PM by James Cummings

sburnap,

a large retail chain that started down this road and ended up really pissing off a Mr. Phuc Yu of Van Neys, California.

yes, vietnamese-in-english does seem to get the worst of it. there was a lovely family-run soup joint here in the vancouver area, that even made it onto letterman once: pho bich nga.

my vietnamese-born friend gets really upset at me whenever i try to pronounce it.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:39 PM by miriam beetle

If my very dear friend Abi has not yet perused this site, I would think she had been remiss.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:49 PM by James D. Macdonald

This rather reminds me of the time USS PONCE made a port call in Portsmouth, England. And all the Ponce sailors went ashore on liberty wearing their Ponce ballcaps and their Ponce windbreakers. And all the Brit sailors sort of sidled away from them in waterfront bars, and asked, out of the sides of their mouths, of other US sailors present, "What's the matter with those lads?" or words to that effect.

Posted August 21, 2008 6:51 PM by James D. Macdonald

I strongly advise you to reconsider the blanket prohibition on "penis" and "vagina". These are the formal, even clinical, terms for these body parts. Someone may quite legitimately want to discuss medical procedures, say, and should not have to resort to maiden-aunt terms like "manhood" or "flower" to do so.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:09 PM by Johan Larson

Having recovered from my sudden chill...

I am amused that "motherfucker" isn't on the list, as it's a core word; much overused.

Cunny, titty/titties, browneye, trouser-snake, pud,jack-off

The inclusion of wop leads me to think spic, beaner, wetback, homo, girly-man etc. might be better excluded.

Other than that, I seem to be drawing a blank; like in barracks certainly had a lot of foul language, and in the field all the more, but it's not springing fresh to mind.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:10 PM by Terry Karney

Speaking as one who's worked on related problems, I think this approach will have a disastrous effect on your software's usability. Here's why:

Arsenal. arsenic. analytic. psychoanalysis. assent. Holy Mass. passivity. enclitics. Bruce Cockburn. cocker spaniels. Joe Cocker. cumin. documents. cucumbers. Scunthorpe. seashells. hellenic art. Milford, Connecticut. sextet. sextillion. Essex. spices. auspices. haruspices. perspicacity.

Need I continue? Need I explain further?

My suggestion instead:

Disable most if not all stemming at run-time. Instead, in your internal table, add common compounds of those words ("-hat", "-hole"), and then explicitly stem the specific swearwords you want to ban, into the specific derivations you want to be considered as being variations on those words. You could use a grammar of some sort to automatically generate all the derivatives via -s, -es, -er, -ers, -ing, -ery, etc.

One exception: it is probably safe to stem "f_ck" at match-time because it's such a powerful word in English, that the language avoids any compound that includes or sounds like it.

If you're not convinced, look into the history of problems antispam software has had with similar lists. Broad pattern-matching has usually proved to be utterly disastrous.

Try my proposed approach instead, and you're fairly likely to pre-empt most of the compounds people will try first to get around the profanity filter: "asshattery", etc.

If it gets too much nuisance to figure out words that get past the filter, people will instead invent their own non-profane profanities to use in place. (For instance, in the SA forums, people use "lovingly caress", as in "lovingly caress that!") At that point your filter has succeeded.

Oh my. I think I just triggered ML's own profanity filter. I didn't think there was one!

Posted August 21, 2008 7:18 PM by Clifton Royston

The one that jumps out for me is "Paki", which should be in "UK Core", not "UK Additional". The official ranked list of offensive words in the context of British broadcasting is quoted here, with a link to the full report. It looks like a useful resource for your purposes. (I also second the recommendation of Roger's Profanisaurus.)

Posted August 21, 2008 7:18 PM by Iain Coleman

Sarah S @8:
I learned a two-verse version at church youth retreats:*

Biff Biff Bam Bam
Son of a bitch, god damn
Hidy Tidy Christ Almighty
Rah Rah Fuck!

Rah once, rah twice,
Holy Jumping** Jesus Christ
Biff Bam God Damn
Rah Rah Shit!

*Yes, Unitarian Universalist ones.
**Sometimes "Humping".

Posted August 21, 2008 7:21 PM by Marc Moskowitz

Someone was recently tell me of a Vietnamese eatery called Pho King.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:32 PM by John

This reminds me of the search filters on US libraries some years ago, that prevented patrons from looking up "Superbowl XXX."

Posted August 21, 2008 7:35 PM by James D. Macdonald

sherman alexi, writing for a seattle altweekly recently, on the word motherfucker:
23. "Motherfucker" is, of course, the purest distillation of mama insults. Since single mothers are sadly common and sweetly revered in black culture, mama jokes are ironically hilarious. However, I've always wondered why the term "fatherfucker" is so rarely used as an insult. I think it's far more original, powerful, and disturbing than "motherfucker." I assume that "motherfucker" is an insult borne of misogyny, so wouldn't "fatherfucker" be a more egalitarian, homoerotic, and therefore more disturbing obscenity? Wouldn't we all be challenging the patriarchy if we adopted its use?

24. Kobe Bryant is one mean and gifted fatherfucker. Does that work for you?

I walked into an unknown bar on Pike st, heard this being read aloud (loudly), and knew I'd found a keeper.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:39 PM by sherrold

#89 Cliffton: Oh my. I think I just triggered ML's own profanity filter. I didn't think there was one!

There isn't, per se, but there is a list of terms frequently used by spammers that triggers automatic moderation.

I wonder if a Bayesian filter might not be constructed, so that each library creates its own list of forbidden words, based on their local mores?

Posted August 21, 2008 7:40 PM by James D. Macdonald

Caroline: I too find myself blushing, which is funny. I think it's because some secret part of me wonders what people I wish to think well of me will wonder when they see the oddball list of things I know. What secret wonders will they have of my interests.

We blush because we are embarrassed. We are embarrased only when we fear shame.

We feel shame only from those who opinion we value.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:46 PM by Terry Karney

Well, a quick google informed me what "milf" meant. My goodness.

If you're going to have British offensive racist terms, consider "wog", a word which caused me to gasp out loud the first time I saw it written down.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:53 PM by Jo Walton

Jo Walton #97:
So you're not a fan of Military SF?

*ducks*

Posted August 21, 2008 7:56 PM by Soon Lee

Ack, that should be Military Fantasy.

Oh, for a time machine.

Posted August 21, 2008 7:57 PM by Soon Lee

The inhabitants of Scunthorpe may still find themselves unfortunately excluded from conversation.

Q: Which three English football teams have obscenities in their names?

A: Arsenal, Scunthorpe, and Manchester Fucking United.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:01 PM by Tim Walters

I don't recall seeing or hearing "milf" anywhere before the movie American Pie came out, and the term was so obscure in that movie that they felt the need to define it. (I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the screenwriter made it up.)

Now, of course, it's a favorite of spammers and on-line porn sites everywhere.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:12 PM by James D. Macdonald

Since no one's mentioned them, a few more delightful terms of art:

Choad, quim, cooze, swive and sard.

Gunsel/gonsel, catamite (and remember, cenobites can be catamites and catamites can be cenobites, but cenobites are not automatically catamites and vice-versa), bundli, bufu, larro, quean (naughty in multiple meanings).

Oh, this could take a while.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:13 PM by Zak

Like Daniel, I'm dismayed to find "gay" on the list; I understand that "dyke" is still perhaps more widely used as a slur than a self-identification, and that there are strong generational issues, so I'm not going to object to that. (Though I do wonder what this would do to Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For books, or reviews of her more recent Fun Home that mention her earlier work.) "Gay", however, is the generally used term, and this filtering would effectively force people back in the closet. Worse, the allegedly-neutral term -- "homosexual" -- is predominantly used in a negative context. You're inadvertently selecting for bigotry here.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:14 PM by lorax

Speaking of the problem with Scunthorpe, Wikipedia's on it.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:15 PM by Calton Bolick

Oh yes, and if you're to include Dutch, my name (Zak) is apparently unsavory.

I was very happy indeed to discover that.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:15 PM by Zak

Jo #97 the interesting thing linguistically about MILF is the intentionality embedded in it. I suspect there's a madonna/whore split in MILF vs Cougar.

Now that Polish and Eastern European immigrants are the latest wave in the UK, is there a new racial epithet for them to watch for?

Posted August 21, 2008 8:17 PM by Kevin Marks

Ah... My juvenile brain was amused that the UU Youth were sometimes humping at summer camp.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:23 PM by Terry Karney

I'm still giggling at the Lord of the Rings Online attempt to filter their webchat:

The chat system has a rather bizarre filtering system which blocks the hell in hello, along with sm, tit and other such useful morphemes - so don’t you go trying to talk about [FILTERED]elly black[FILTERED]iths pe[FILTERED]ioning tailored s[FILTERED]ching - let alone buttresses, you little devil….

Worked it out? ROT13 translation just in case: fzryyl oynpxfzvguf crgvgvbavat gnvybevat fgvgpuvat

And then there was drunk banned in Age of Conan because runk is rude in Scandinavian... Drunkenness Leads to Masturbation.

Not that it saved the AoC rep who got horny with a customer. Oh well :)

Posted August 21, 2008 8:29 PM by Sylvia

Queef.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a PMILF. Also, the thing the Dutch boy stuck his thumb in is a dike, not a dyke.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:37 PM by shadowsong

(in which he stuck his thumb, blah, blah, yer mom ends sentences with prepositions.)

Posted August 21, 2008 8:42 PM by shadowsong

Comparing Abi's post to Jim's, it looks like profanity is roughly six times more popular than Moose Festivals.

That's actually a lower ratio than I would have expected.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:43 PM by Evan Goer

This is a task requiring specialist statistical analysis.

Can I still say that?

Posted August 21, 2008 8:44 PM by Hank Roberts

Hmm. Been there. Done that. See my comment over at BoingBoing. It is literally the last word (with several typos, alas). And ditto Clifton @89.

This is not to say that Abi's firm should not undertake the effort, but that the unintended consequences might cause more fracas amongst customers (and amusement among employees). I should also like to note that if one were to add "chink" to these lists, one would deprive oneself of quoting from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I am speaking both as a "Chink" and a fan of the Bard.

Now waiting for Cockney (ooh, ooh) Rhyming slang to get the proverbial chop.

Posted August 21, 2008 8:48 PM by meteorplum

The best restaurant name relevant here, in my opinion, is King Dong in Berkeley. Even better, two storefronts down is a massage parlor.

(The address is 2429 Shattuck Ave -- Street View tells the story.)

Posted August 21, 2008 8:52 PM by Claude Muncey

Charlie @ 35:

Because I am a member of the Harry Potter generation, my instinct was not to reverse the "u" & "n", but to replace "c" with "k" and come up with Knut, which is the smallest monetary unit.

Human spellcheck: Almost as fallible as Microsoft Word.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:00 PM by Sarah

My brother worked at a place that had a similar list on their email filters. It banned words like rape, pink, & bush. It would reject the whole email, and not tell you which words specifically triggered the ban (I figured the above words by elimination). It had so many words in the list that at one point 10% of messages were being changed and sent multiple times, trying to figure out what had set off the filter this time.

Eventually one of his co-workers wrote a little script that would take a message, insert a . into each word somewhere (2 or more if the word was big enough) and then send it. It produced messages that looked really weird, but at least they got sent.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:04 PM by Stephen Hope

John @ 18:
"depending on your fucking point of view."
Not "depending on your point of fucking view"?

The latter feels much better to my ears.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:09 PM by Martin

Stephen Hope @ 116... My brother worked at a place that had a similar list on their email filters. It banned words like rape, pink, & bush.

There goes Singin' In The Rain.

"Well, I can't make love to a bush!"

Posted August 21, 2008 9:22 PM by Serge

I'd love to help, but conflict of interest prevents me. I've worked on such a list for my employer. I will note though that people named Michelle will not be happy with this. Oh, and Goshit is a real last name.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:29 PM by Allan Beatty

I was on a chat board with filtering so clumsily aggressive, I learned a few new swear words by figuring out what had been [expletive deleted] in the middle of other words and phrases.

My favorite, however, was in a discussion of timepieces: the word pocke[expletive deleted]ch.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:50 PM by Tamago

I may have mentioned this before, but I was once a fairly active participant in a forum where they instituted a filtering program that did an automatic string-replace, swapping the swear words out for less offensive terms.

"Cock" was swapped with "Thingy."

The problem?

It was a forum for poultry breeders.

Imagine my surprise when I wrote that I had some young marans cockeral for sale and in my post they were "thingyerals."

Posted August 21, 2008 9:56 PM by Cygnet

Terry, @#96, I'm with you. There is a tiny bit of my brain that is appalled that i KNOW all these words. Then again I'm a word/spelling freak.

Posted August 21, 2008 9:57 PM by Paula Helm Murray

Hm. 'rent boy' and 'cottaging' would almost certainly be dubious in the uk, and confusing in the US.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:05 PM by xeger

What? No bint? Nor wetback?

Posted August 21, 2008 10:09 PM by Trey

Speaking as the other half of the Montreal emigres, I was going to complain that "milf" was on the list at all. Difficult acronym to use as an expletive, though it likely does qualify as a term of sexual harassment.

(Really, Jim, people only learned the acronym from American Pie?? Gads.)

Posted August 21, 2008 10:17 PM by Ken Houghton

Nothing of Yiddish derivation? You darn putzes--er, yutzes.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:19 PM by Brenda Kalt

Of all the words in the Additional list, I've got to say: "erotic"? Really? It doesn't seem like it would be a useful word to have access to when tagging pieces of literature? (The same argument works for "fetish," too, though perhaps a bit less convincingly.)

Also, what lorax @ 103 said: why include "gay"? If the software is customizable, then let the bigots plug it in themselves. No need to enable their bigotry.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:28 PM by heresiarch

Apparently 'frak' isn't on the bad-word list on my employer's email system.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:29 PM by Serge

I haven't got the stamina to read this thread closely -- but if putz is out, surely shmuck should also be on the list.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:31 PM by Lizzy L

Terry Karney @ 96, I think you have put your finger on it.

sherrold @ 94, I ran into someone a little while ago who said she preferred the word "gutterfucker." You know, I like that better for insulting purposes -- it's so much harsher. It retains most of the power that the original has lost.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:33 PM by Caroline

Add me to the chorus against predefining "gay" as an offensive word.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:37 PM by Clifton Royston

I'm surprised it took 97 comments for someone to mention wog.

In terms of racial epithets, I would probably add hebe, yid, beaner, wetback, spearchucker, junglebunny, chink, gook and possibly spade.

Can't really help with curse words and body parts. I've got kind of a limited vocabulary there.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:53 PM by cathy

As there's no blanket ban on strings containing "ass", I might suggest the modern "asshat", which is somewhat more wholesome than "asshole", but also more evocative.

I see "pr0n" has already been mentioned.

Some of Japan's more interesting exports include hentai, which may or may not be yaoi, although these may be too specific.

Posted August 21, 2008 10:55 PM by AzureLunatic

I'd encourage you to reconsider banning the words that are actually anatomically proper (vagina, labia, penis, etc) unless you're sure there is no appropriate context for their use.

This was an ongoing problem when I worked at a large healthcare company with a Mommy-Knows-Best web filter. The clinical research people were constantly getting shut down for trying to do research that used horribly indecent words like "breast".

Posted August 21, 2008 11:09 PM by Lance Weber

abi, as a librarian (although in the USA, so perhaps not a client for your company) I would almost certainly not recommend this product for purchase.

We already have enough problems with filters on our city-provided internet computers that it literally interferes with our work, and most staff bring in their personal laptops and piggyback on external hot spots just to answer simple reference questions -- just today I was blocked from looking up the weather in Edinburgh, for no obvious reason I could see, but surely some "stemmed" word triggered the filter.

We also had the very not amusing problem of personal names prevented from being entered into our patron database -- many Thai names end with -porn, for example, and "Van Dyke" is not an uncommon surname.

Obviously you can't tell your bosses "Nah, forget it." But if you let them know that at least one potential client swears that your product would make her shoot her computer, it may give them pause.

Posted August 21, 2008 11:16 PM by hapax

A couple of UK ones:

minge
berk

Posted August 21, 2008 11:17 PM by mcz

I have a couple of follow-on thoughts.

First, there are a couple of web service based profanity filter providers that would be a much better investment of programming resources than re-inventing this wheel:

CDYNE Profanity Filter Web Service
WebPurify Profanity Filter Web Service

Second, if you are committed to building it yourself the BBC has a rather long filter list.

Posted August 21, 2008 11:24 PM by Lance Weber

You have my sympathy. It's no fun implementing a feature that you know will be annoying to well- intentioned users, and not much of a deterrent to the putzes. Oh, well. The road to [FILTERED] is paved with good intentions.

Posted August 21, 2008 11:29 PM by janetl

I've got no words to add, just this little vignette: I left this page up on the desktop, which my partner shut down -- and then she had to ask me "What the hell were you reading?!?"

I've had similar problems with net nanny software blocking me from accessing a vendor's website, probably because it referred to the mouse's sex or some such offensive topic. This is a difficult parameter to monitor, and the human brain is better than any program at parsing out the true underlying meaning versus non-obvious expletives.

Posted August 21, 2008 11:33 PM by Ginger

Wow. All this way, and it's still left for me to say: siwash, papoose, squaw, brave, and chief.

I can't see a list being generated which is at once non-racist itself, and yet comprehensive in blocking racial slurs, nor capable of both blocking common sexual invicative and allowing medical and scientific searches.

Posted August 21, 2008 11:40 PM by JESR

Oh, and I'll add that any library software that blocks access to Conrad's NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS, not to mention Langston Hughes's poetry, deserves to be burned in bonfires whilst lovers of the English language dance around it.

Unfortunately, that includes the software that my library has installed...

Posted August 21, 2008 11:50 PM by hapax

One might observe that there's not much point in it all considering what the particle says about Carter's immediate successor.

Oh, why bother.

Posted August 22, 2008 12:09 AM by C. Wingate