If you decide to comment on an article appearing in the Boston Globe's web site, you'd better be careful of the words you use, even if in the context of your statement the word is perfectly harmless. I tried to enter a comment following their classical-music critic Jeremy Eichler's story on the schedule of operas next season by Opera Boston. I expressed the hope that they would not add any distracting features such as the video the Boston Lyric Opera inserted into their their staging of Benjamin Britten's setting of the Henry James novella "Turn of the Screw". (One opera being staged is Beethoven's "Fidelio" a piece with a story line that could be interpreted as being political in nature. Stage directors in the past have been unable to resist "updating" it to recent or contemporary events.) Well, when I tried to post the comment, the website filter declared that I should change one word: "screw"! Oh, I get it...instead of hiring a human being to read submissions, and THEN decide if they're suitable for publishing, a robot has been programmed to look for POTENTIALLY naughty words. Uh oh...I'd better not refer to Tea Party Convention attenders as "teabaggers".
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Comments
Brain-dead automatic filters....
By Michael Kerpan
Thu, 02/25/2010 - 4:53pm
...don't count as "moderation" at all -- just incompetent forum management.
Whenever you design a profanity filter
By Jay Levitt
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 4:06am
You have to start out by making a few bottomumptions.
Took me a minute....
By Michael Kerpan
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 9:44am
...to figure this out. Must still not be fully alert this morning.
So would you pay to read and
By NotWhitey
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 12:32am
So would you pay to read and make comments?
The Globe's filter is a joke.
By anon
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 9:14am
The Globe's filter is a joke. But so is the idea of hiring someone just to do comment-filtering. As a middle ground, the Globe easily could allow "suck" and "screw" to pass.
Screw off (just testing UHub)
By escapedfromeastie
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 1:05pm
I wonder if Masshole would get past the filter.
I am your worst filter nightmare
By adamg
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 1:13pm
Here's the current UHub filtering scheme:
If you have an account, there is no filter, except possibly retroactively (i.e., I use my awesome superuser powers and delete whole posts and comments, bwa-ha-ha).
If you don't have an account, whatever you post goes into a queue where I have to approve it.
I used to use a version of Akismet, but it was causing more problems than it solved, because while it did a decent job at blocking spam, it kept marking certain legitimate users as spammers and blocking what they wrote.
Now, there are spammers out there who actually take the time to register for an account (or more likely, hire some housewife in Bangalore to register for an account) and then post spam. So not a perfect system, and would probably fall apart if (sorry, when) UHub becomes Big Media, but by the time that happens, I'll be able to hire people to deal with it (or take a look at the latest Akismet module, which maybe works better).
Globe Moderation
By shoebox
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 1:33pm
I think they also remove the comments section entirely if the word "Delahunt" is used!
What annoys me to no end about Boston.com is how
By roadman
Fri, 02/26/2010 - 2:44pm
they have become increasingly selective about which articles they will actually let readers submit comments on.
IMO, this is a more aggregious restriction of free speech than using automatic filters to block profane comments.
The Boston Globe is deader
By anon
Sat, 02/27/2010 - 5:40pm
The Boston Globe is deader than a roach in a roach motel. It's a pointless exercise in personal frustration to try to deal with its paper mentality on the web and especially on the phone. I've given up. They continue to publish pictorial articles without photos, web-relevant articles without links, etc. The editor is impervious to progress or sense and if the Globe board had an ounce of intelligence would send him packing.