What can I say? Sometimes simple, well-intended things yield up unexpected results. Why do I bring this up? I was reading my Discussion Forums, and one thread went into state fairs and such. A link was provided to the Web site for the Haddam Neck Fair in Haddam Neck, Connecticut. The address of haddamneckfair.com, due to the way the domain name is formatted, coupled with my forum’s built-in swear filter, caused the URL to be rendered like this:
had[expletive deleted]eckfair.com
I knew that the swear filter would render certain words (the famous seven-plus-three, plus a few others) as “[expletive deleted]” when displayed on-screen, but I never thought it would filter out a URL like that. Still, that’s pretty efficient for the swear filter, even rendering the URL incorrectly in its mission to filter out the profanity I’ve told it to watch for – something no one expected it to do. After all, it took the “damn” right out of haddamneckfair.com.
I ended up fixing the problem by taking “damn” out of the swear filter. I rationalized it on the forums by saying, “I figure we’re all old enough for ‘damn’ on here, and since it’s interfering with legitimate activity, I’m going to let it through.”
That was quite a strange thing to happen, though.