Does anyone else on this list shoot off comments to the CNN.com message boards? I do, and for quite awhile I was frustrated that some of my comments would just vanish off into limbo without a trace or an explanation. Then I noticed that other people were complaining about the same thing (some making dark accusations of censorship based on ideas that they thot CNN was trying to squelch).
The reality is that CNN employs a particularly brainless, eye-rollingly literal-minded nannybot to screen comments. Those that contain forbidden words are summarily shunted off to the great bitbucket in the, um, well not sky, I'm guessing. But you would be amazed at what the idiot nannybot considers to be unfit for human consumption — words like consTITution, acCUMulate, aFTWard, and even cnn.COM. So, operating on the noble principle that, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, I whumped up a FileMaker Pro database to deal with this particular nail. I call it the CNN Nannybot Evader, and it's super-simple. It's a single window with 3 panes. You paste your intended text into the left-hand pane, any "naughty" words appear in the middle pane, and they're highlighted in context in the right-hand pane. If anyone would like a copy, just ask me OFF LIST at [email protected].
