
Scunthorpe Problem - mjs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
======
jgrahamc
Imagine being called John Graham-Cumming. Long, long ago Google didn't
understand that "Cumming" was a name. Google myself, get served ads for adult
web sites.

And Eudora's Mood Watch feature would flag every single email I sent as
offensive.

~~~
JadeNB
There's an old joke about a girl named Megan E. Cummings, who successfully
petitioned for a change to her university e-mail, which had been auto-
generated according to the scheme `substr($LASTNAME, 6).$FIRSTINIT.$MIDINIT`.

~~~
gerdesj
Nearly my first helpdesk call at a new job was for a Wayne Anker. Luckily we
used family name + initial for ID and not the other way around.

I had a particular friend in childhood. What on earth Mr and Mrs Head were
thinking about when they named their son Richard is beyond me. They already
had a daughter called Rachel so should have got the hang of the naming process
the second time around.

~~~
amyjess
> I had a particular friend in childhood. What on earth Mr and Mrs Head were
> thinking about when they named their son Richard is beyond me.

I knew a Richard Bates in college (yes, the same guy from the Silk Road
trial). He betrayed one of my best friends in a really deplorable way, so you
can guess the nicknames we called him behind his back.

------
colemannugent
Tom Scott did a video on this:

Why Web Filters Don't Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE)

It's well done, like the rest of his content.

~~~
Zuider
On a similar note, I wonder what web filters would make of the URLs for Pen
Island stationers shop or the Mole Station creche websites.

------
HarryHirsch
Try keeping up with the journals as a chemist while on holiday behind an
overeager webproxy. You are told that the subdiscipline of analytical
chemistry is out of bounds.

But that's a feature. The voting public sees that you are trying hard and
failing, that's somehow considered better than shaking your head at the
intractable problem.

~~~
madcaptenor
In my former life as a mathematician, I worked on analytic combinatorics.
Mathematicians aren't quite as aggressive about abbreviating as chemists, so I
never saw the abbreviation "anal. comb." in the wild, but I always expected
to.

~~~
Zuider
Philosophers have to contend with Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. The title
was particularly striking on the old Dynix Automated Library System.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynix_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynix_\(software\))

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erbo
That's like the British joke about which three football teams have swear words
in their names: Arsenal, Scunthorpe, and MANCHESTER FUCKING UNITED. :-D

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zitterbewegung
I've run into this problem myself when parsing recipes for food allergies .
Doughnuts has the word nuts in it but doesn't always contain nuts as an
ingredient .

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cwmma
Just had to update a conference web page because the sponsor logos had a css
class of 'sponsor' which ublock and others were blocking.

~~~
prezjordan
This happened at Medium [0] because they hash paragraphs to a 4-digit
hexadecimal string, and ad blockers would hide things like "#ad01", "#ad02",
etc.

[0]: [https://medium.engineering/the-unluckiest-
paragraphs-751dd36...](https://medium.engineering/the-unluckiest-
paragraphs-751dd36d2d30)

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lb1lf
Back in the late nineties, I attended the Norwegian University of Technology
and Science.

Someone in the IT department figured it was an excellent idea to host all
student accounts on the stud.ntnu.no subdomain.

We got a few odd bounces.

~~~
kbenson
I was sure you were going for a NUTS reference with that first sentence. Alas,
a missed opportunity for stud.nuts.edu. ;)

~~~
amyjess
I had a professor once tell the class that Minix was created with the Free
University Compiler Kit.

He realized his mistake a few seconds later when we all started laughing.

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jap
Came across an instance of this recently, I think on the FT's website... It
took me a while to figure out what was going on with "smar * * * * ches".

~~~
rjeli
okay, I give up. Is it two words?

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Think tech.

------
mikeash
When I'm bored, googling for "buttbuttination" provides nearly unlimited
entertainment.

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minimaxir
TVTropes as a good list of amusing examples as well:
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScunthorpeProblem](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScunthorpeProblem)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Obligatory warning: probably the single most addictive website in existence.
Don't go there if you have something else to do today.

------
jfoutz
Many amusing examples in the source page, but this one really stood out.

> It also blocked e-mails sent in Welsh because it did not recognize the
> language.

With my (very) limited exposure to Welsh, i kinda get that it would give spam
filters fits.

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joss82
This problem could be solved by defining a logical rule (most probably through
a regular expression) that would only filter the bad word when present as a
single word.

I'm amazed how rarely this simple system is used. Instead you end up with
monstrosities such as the power stars chat that mangles most words into
unreadable mess of _____.

Could be a fun game though. Guess the words!

_ __ertion

Weight and m __ _

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BillBohan
When I worked for a company that made label printers we had a potential
customer who wanted us to print labels with human readable and barcode fields
with 4 random letters and 4 random digits but did not want the letters to
spell any obscene words. We asked for a list of words to ban but they declined
to provide such a list. We did not get the contract.

------
davidddavidson
Clbuttic

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cperciva
Note that the problem of words being misunderstood when lacking context is not
limited to computers. My father - a chemistry professor - was at a conference
a few years ago about Free Radicals when he was approached by a member of the
public who wanted to know if he could participate...

~~~
jpindar
Not quite as funny, but I used to work for a company that had the word
microwave in its name - we made radar components and such. We once were
approached by someone who wanted us to repair their microwave oven. Our
building had no obvious sign and didn't look like an appliance repair shop, so
I don't know how they found us.

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ewrong
[http://www.penisland.net](http://www.penisland.net)

~~~
js2
expertsexchange.com was (is?) the most (in)famous of these.

~~~
ben_w
I thought it was a dead heat between Pen Island, Powergen Italia, and
Therapist Finder?

~~~
amyjess
There was also Mole Station Nursery.

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kyle-rb
I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to not be possible to trade
certain Pokémon over the global trade system with their default name due to a
filter like this.

I believe Nosepass and Cofagrigus were two of the affected.

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UncleSlacky
This is still happening on some subreddits, /r/latestagecapitalism for
example.

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lochii
see wikipedia article "Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia"

