Is this a bad word?

[Abraham Chaffin]

It’s a moderated word.

Abraham

[Bob Zelin]

I have gotten caught with this one at least twice –
it’s a common expression for me to say “are you on C R A C K ?”
and if you put all the letters together like you did, you get caught. It’s kind of silly.

Bob Zelin

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, I use that phrase all the time and get caught too.

I think we can unfilter that word now, but back when we started the COW, this and “w arez” were among the most common words in spam posts advertising unauthorized software downloads…and bots were deluging us with hundreds, sometimes thousands of these a day.

Most people have no idea the scale of such problems on a site our size…since there’s only a tiny handful sites our size…but no kidding, we literally didn’t have the money to hire enough people to block the spam for this one word.

That’s the thing for other words that we filter for case by case review. We started with no filters, but, just like your email program does, we’ve flagged words as they’ve shown the need for watching, and we review flagged posts ourselves to make sure that legitimate ones get through in a timely fashion.

(Don’t forget: we’ve been doing this for so long that when we started, there was no such thing as an email spam filter!)

I’m going to double check, but I think it’s been a while since this word was an issue. If so, we’ll lift the filter on it, but a heads up: given the immense scale of problems with it in the past, it’s possible that we’ll need to resume filtering it.

Thanks,
Tim

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Jeremy Garchow]

Spam.

It all makes sense now.

Thank you.

[T. Payton]

Tim,

I got blocked this week by using the offensive “football”. It struck me as very funny. I’ve also been blocked with “crack” a number of times also.

I can understand about blocking spam and I am all for it, but while you are at it what about blocking middle school potty words?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Tim Wilson]

The “f-ball” word is a new member of our spam filter family, having been an overwhelming spam word over the past few weeks. We suspect it will die down soon enough…but it has been a real problem.

The other word has been among the most common spam words from the very earliest days of the COW, second only perhaps to a drug whose name is likely in your spam filter every day. We’re still constantly inundated with the “c” spam word, so the one or two regular uses of the word we flag in a month are worth it. Sorry. 🙂 My own use of that word — as in, “are you on…” surely accounts for half of the ostensibly non-spam volume. LOL

Our standard for general language is, generally speaking, US basic cable, an admittedly low-ish bar, but one we can work with. 🙂

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[T. Payton]

Very funny. 😉

So my vote would be to raise the bar just a bit of professionalism from Basic American Cable, and include any word that if you said it while you were 10 in front of your mom you mouth should be washed out with soap.

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Tim Wilson]

[T. Payton] “…include any word that if you said it while you were 10 in front of your mom you mouth should be washed out with soap.”

That was a pretty long list at my house, but I see what you’re saying. 🙂