ROTFL!

No 69?

I guess they don't allow you to deliver to S#*$!horpe either!

How pathetic. As my nine-year old daughter will tell you, 69 is the number that comes after 68 and before 70. It also represents the zodiac sign of Pisces.

I know it is also a slang term for a sexual position, but so what? Children aren't going to be offended or start using the number innapropriately, unless grown ups make a big deal of it. Ooops, too late! Well done MSN.

PS

Webmasterworld doesn't like that town in England either! What a world we live in.

[edited by: Matt_Probert at 2:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 28, 2007]

I guess they don't allow you to deliver to S#*$!horpe either!

I have a lovely image in my head of non-UK people who don't know where you're talking about going through a list of swearwords in their head and trying to fit them in...!

It does raise an interesting point though - the difficulties of filtering content whilst allowing users to perform basic actions. [space]swearword[space] is a fairly simple one - I think that less obvious issues such as 69 or S#*$!horpe should be 'flagged' up rather than automatically filtered.

My grandfather was from S#*$!horpe. Otherwise I would have been in the "non UK and trying to fit words in" camp. LOL

Back on topic... good points. MSN's editorial rejections seem to be a little more conservative and wide-sweeping than the rest. The 69 thing is crazy, esp since it most likely is a part number, price, or whatever.

Melissa

Theres a page on wikipedia about the 'S#*$!horpe problem'...

Residents of #*$!tone, South Yorkshire experienced problems due to the town's inclusion of the substring #*$!, while Lightwater in Surrey caused a similar issue due to the substring twat.

Other examples include socialist/ism and specialist/ism contain a well know pharmaceutical spam term...

I have a client who has the word "Bank" in their name. It's also part of their display url, destination url, and a good portion of their keywords. adCenter would not allow me to create a login id with the word "bank" in it, despite the fact that I have a system for creating user accounts such that I always will know which one to use for which client in which provider (obviously with different passwords) I emailed them, called them - nobody could give me an answer WHY the string "bank" was disallowed, but nobody could fix it either. To this day I still have to look up the damn user name every time I want to log on to the adCenter for that client.

All ridiculous, except for netmeg's last complaint, which I suspect is related to preventing dictionary attacks against high-value targets.

I have a client who has the word "Bank" in their name.

Talulah? Boy, that's double-trouble!

I wonder if they're also banning $666 or $6.66 as the work of the devil?

AdCenter's filters are turned to hyper-sensitive. I launched a campaign for Audible and one of the author's shared a name with an adult film star. I tried explaining this to Microsoft, but to no avail.

If Typhoo put the tea in Britain, who put the #*$! in S#*$!horpe?
;)

No surprise, that MSN is way behind everything. Without that Windows monopoly, Gates would be a complete loser with all of his failed products.

apparently they don't let you use 13 either - because it's unlucky

I have a lovely image in my head of non-UK people who don't know where you're talking about going through a list of swearwords in their head and trying to fit them in.

That's me! NOTHING made sense to me. I had to Wiki to find out what the heck the town could be! Even after I read the town's name w/o the characters, I still didn't get it at first. I don't think the average person would give that a second thought.

All ridiculous, except for netmeg's last complaint, which I suspect is related to preventing dictionary attacks against high-value targets.

Still ridiculous. Google, Yahoo, and a host of other vendors and service providers don't have a problem with it.

Just out of interest, does AdCenter cause problems for advertising related to breast cancer topics?

That must be the most quoted example of filters gone mad, I think it was AOL who first blocked the word breast in their online community?

They lost me as a client a month ago. I simply got tired of them constantly disallowing ads based on relevancy. Face it, they are a fringe player. If their traffic mattered maybe I would put up with it, but they just don't have the volume to enforce this sort of crap.

i tried to google for S#*$!horpe. yes, with the characters in there.
and it returns the real word as well as SBLEEP horpe, S*censored*horpe, S(edited)horpe, S#OOPS#horpe, S(stop that)horpe and so on - each of the terms in boldface.
that's weird :)

I also g'ed for the scrambled word. So there's people out there that seem to generate real traffic using this stunt. I really wonder when there'll be a browser-plugin that shows the original words - alongside some ads .....

Always remember a lesson from James Joyce:

If you see kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me. (U 616)

There are always ways to get around anything ;).
n.