Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Dick's Sporting Goods produces a list of 938 banned words; “dick” is outlawed (m.dickssportinggoods.com)
19 points by sigacts 3241 days ago
11 comments

Common stuff. I work for Bazaarvoice; we have "generic" lists of "bad" words, as well as client-specific ones. We use them to automatically reject product reviews, or to at least flag them for human intervention.

You all can probably understand why these lists err on the side of false positive, rather than false negative.

There's also the occasional fun false positive, such as a reply to a review from a client that would include a URL with one of the "bad" words as a URL token: e.g., "To learn how to clean your vacuum, download the manual at www.manufacturer.com/download?product=123&ass=abc" - where "ass" is some abbreviated variable name that ends up causing replies to get rejected.

(There's also some really, really fun words in some of those lists that I have no idea how they got there. My favorite one is actually from a different company that maintains a word list: N.I.P.P.L.E.S. Yes, all capital, with periods in between the words. Highly specific, and I'd love to know what was the original trigger for adding that to the list.)

Dick's probably didn't compile this themselves.
Anyone notice that there is a certain m---likcer entry but not the correctly spelled version? haha
Now if I could just get Dick's to quit spamming me.

Maybe if I use this list ...

My favorite is whoralicious.
What's it used for? Usernames/passwords or something?
You can personalize jerseys and sporting goods.

https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/products/maxfli-personali...

Ah thanks, I had no idea. Some of these are insanely specific, weird or tame ("soused", "ovum", "dimwit")
Many were probably added after someone took a screenshot of a hoodie or whatever they were able to create on their online store, and post it to twitter to the amusement of everyone but Dick's marketing/legal departments.
Why would you outlaw 'fat'? This makes no sense.
These are words that they think could cause offense to their customers. Fat can be insulting and unflattering.
What if someone wanted to say "I'd like to reduce my body fat"?
Then the submitted content would probably get flagged for manual review, and would be approved.
Think this is a modified copy of google's list.
They outlawed "vulgar"...
They rightfully banned "prude".
Very imaginative list.
What about Dicky?