Richard,

Very cool. How were you able to get the list of "naughty" words?

Bruce Herbach

On 11/1/11 11:41 PM, Richard S. Russell wrote:
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].

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