blogs.conchango.com

welcome to the conchango blogging site
Welcome to blogs.conchango.com Sign in | Join | Help
in Search

Ergo

Very random thoughts on a variety of interactive media topics.

*** is an English word for cigarette - but my blog doesn't seem to know this!

 

I was writing a blog post recently, and was describing some approximate and rough calculations. The way we might describe this in the UK is to call them "back of a *** packet" calculations. The word: '***' meaning cigarette.

It's also a word used to describe a form of servitude common in English Public Schools a few years back (and some today actually).

However, my blog, run on Community Server, decided to change '***' to '***'!

Ah, so I see what's happening now... the word I can't seem to use in this post is F - A - G. Which my blog turns into ***. I checked the original post, and the word is intact, so it must be doing the automated censorship and translation at Runtime!

I am guessing that this built-in censorship is due to the fact that this word in the United States is used as a derogatory term for someone who is gay... not here though! However this is an international blog, so do I have duty to be wary of things like this? Or am I allowed to be as British as I like? What exactly is the blogging etiquette on this? Or should I just allow the server I'm on to censor as it sees fit?

Yours effin and blindin, Bollocks Wanker Dawson. :)

 

Published 18 March 2008 13:00 by Paul.Dawson

Comments

 

David Simister said:

Paul reminds me of a fond memory from the halcyon days of early internet usage at Sainsburys. Myself, a two year veteran of the scanning development team and Steve the Tobacco supply chain manager thought we would try out the recently set live internet opportunity on our fairly recent personal computers.

In a drive to save the Company a fortune on Cigarette purchasing we rather naively typed a search command for "Cheap f-a-g-s". Amazed at the speed of response we found we had gathered a surprisingly large number of hits, the vast majority from sites in the USA and definitely not advertising inexpensive tobacco products.

I think it was quite soon after this that the IT team felt that some form of monitoring and blocking of searches might be in order.

Still as a foot note the search did actually highlight a clever wheeze whereby a chap in Calais would sell you a cheap plastic cigarette lighter for well above its true value with a free gift of 200 cigarettes!

However when we explored this further with the legal team and a brief conversation with Her Majesty's Customs it was suggested that although not strictly illegal this practice in a major super market would be frowned upon to say the least.  

May 15, 2008 18:02
Anonymous comments are disabled

About Paul.Dawson

I started working in 'new media' when it was... around 1996, doing websites for people like DHL and Cellnet (remember them?) as well as CD-Roms for people like Doring Kindersley. I joined Conchango in 1999 because I was fed up with the conflicts and overlaps between the companies that we tended to partner with to deliver these things. Usually it was a tech company and a marketing agency. Neither had the user's needs in mind, and both were trying hard to take business away from each other.. so at Conchango I saw the opportunity to create an integrated team, who as a result of all being on the same side, and following good user centred design process, delivered better stuff for both our clients and their customers. So we built an interactive media team who do design, branding and user experience, and in 2006 were rated best in Europe at this by Forrester Research. Which was nice! Now I spend a lot of time evangelising to customers and at conferences, about what Conchango do in the field of Customer and Brand Experience, as well as still working for real clients on real projects!
Powered by Community Server (Personal Edition), by Telligent Systems