Bugs and things to fix

[Sunflower]

*stares at you*

Holy son of a ever-[insert long-winded string of things for that filter to work on here]-!

And holy bleep this is like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, where in all the stories the detective has two cases but by the end they turn out to be the same case, cuz guys! Guys! This is what was causing the issue Sunny was talking about where words like "reciprocating" turn into "recipussycating" and so on.
The substitution was treating the *'s used to bleep out bad words as wildcards. I can only assume this was causing some kind of strange bug with its post conversion that possibly we should let SMF know about, just in case. JoB, you'd probably have more relevant ideas than me.

Haha, I guess that makes me the crazy old neighbor in the detective novel "Case Histories" who keeps pestering the police with calls about her cat going missing and the bad smell coming from her back yard...
"Case Histories" is a terrific story, by the way.  I can't say much about it without ruining some of the surprises, but it manages to be funny, terrifying, and touching all at once.

[Sunflower]

I'm totally doing the "the clues were right in front of me all along!" thing right now. I was scouring through the code just yesterday, I saw the censorText references over and over and--nope, didn't think it was important. Lesson learned: when working on two issues at once, don't be afraid to assume they're related.

The issue with the over-strict profanity filter is easy enough to fix though, assuming I understand the issue correctly. So far we've been bleeping out bad words with asterisks, which have the downside of apparently also acting as wildcards. ... In the meantime, subject to further tweaking, I've checked the option to have it replace whole words only, so pussycat is safe while p**** should be bleeped.

P.S. Ooooohhh I love the sound of Slayer of Silence! It's all cool and mythological whilst also being goofily over the top. Trust Solo to come up with the best titles!

All hail our newly crowned Slayer of Silence!  In the words of guest artists Simon and Garfunkel:

...(I)n the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Fools said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell...
And echoed in the wells of silence.

I wish I could think of a way to reciprocate your great (and totally unpaid!) efforts.  In the meantime, I will send out some job applications, check the multiplication on my tax records, and otherwise use all the p****cation words I can think of!   

[JoB]

Let's see whether this gets posted, the one I'm trying to send in the "Health & ..." thread runs into a 404 ...

Edit: This works, the other still hits the wall of "You don't have permission to access /index.php on this server." ...

Edit2: It's again a content dependent problem in posting.

Edit3: The trigger is the (unmasked used of the) word "p e n i c i l l i n".

[Richard Weir]

Try wrapping the problematic content in [ code] brackets?

[Sunflower]

Let's see whether this gets posted, the one I'm trying to send in the "Health & ..." thread runs into a 404 ...

Edit2: It's again a content dependent problem in posting.

Edit3: The trigger is the (unmasked use of the) word "p e n i c i l l i n".

I saw that too, JoB.  I tried naming the antibiotic Alexander Fleming discovered, and got the same error message.  I changed it to "pen-cillin" and it worked.

So it looks like our Forum-Censor is getting a swelled head.  No longer is it enough to replace naughty words with "p****" -- it blocks our messages altogether. 

I wonder if it's a coincidence that the naughty word the Forum is (presumably) confusing "pen-cillin" with also starts with P...?

[JoB]

I wonder if it's a coincidence that the naughty word the Forum is (presumably) confusing "pen-cillin" with also starts with P...?

I'd assume that the match in the swear word library actually startes with "peni" ...

Furthermore, *I* wonder whether there's a browser plugin to automate rainbow-ing penicillin and its ilk ... ?

[Sunflower]

I'd assume that the match in the swear word library actually startes with "peni" ...

Furthermore, *I* wonder whether there's a browser plugin to automate rainbow-ing penicillin and its ilk ... ?

So does this mean we can't say "penitentiary" and similar words?  Or only if we make every letter a different color?  (I'd really like a browser plugin that could do *that*!)

[Eich]

I'd assume that the match in the swear word library actually startes with "peni" ...

Furthermore, *I* wonder whether there's a browser plugin to automate rainbow-ing penicillin and its ilk ... ?

That word isn't censored.  That's just biology, which I trust everyone to be mature about.  Plus, it's not exactly like it sounds good when used as an insult, so I don't see anybody calling names like that.

[Sunflower]

That word isn't censored.  That's just biology, which I trust everyone to be mature about.  Plus, it's not exactly like it sounds good when used as an insult, so I don't see anybody calling names like that.

Huh.  Good to know the Forum-Censor doesn't have an oversized Index of Forbidden Words.  But in that case, why would "pen-i-cillin" trigger a complete message failure?  It's not even the Silence problem that the P-word triggered.  Is the site allergic to certain antibiotics?   

Out of curiosity, how does the Forbidden Words thing work?  Does SMF offer a list of typical "bad words" (presumably starting with George Carlin's Seven Deadly Words) and the admin can use the list and/or add to it? 
 ???  If you think it wouldn't be wise to discuss this in public, that's fine. 

[hushpiper]

Hmmm. You're getting a 403 error on the word pen-icillin? *tests to see if she gets it as well* Yup, it's reproducible. I know you guys have been talking about it in that thread for a while, have you seen a 403 error on that word before? And is anybody seeing this happen with any other words? (I think Kex was saying something the other night but there was too much New Years partying going on.)

On SMF's censor, it's blank to start with and you put in a list of words you don't want on one side, and what you want them censored to on the other. It's pretty simplistic, really. There's no built-in list of words for it to use, and certainly pen-icillin isn't one of the forbidden words.

ETA: I killed that setting change I did before, that made it only censor whole words. Made no difference on the 403 issue. Gonna set up my mirror of the site again for playing with.

[JoB]

have you seen a 403 error on that word before?

I don't think I've ever tried to use it in the forum before ...

And is anybody seeing this happen with any other words? (I think Kex was saying something the other night but there was too much New Years partying going on.)

Back to fuzzballing ...

• Looks like leaving out any one character of the word lets the post pass muster.
• Adding one character, except dangling off the end, has the same effect.
• Replacing any character with a different lowercase one makes it work, too.
• Converting to uppercase, partially or completely, effects no change.
• No cigar when appending an insanely long suffix string, either.
• Or when putting quotes, percent signs, asterisks, angle brackets, ... - rather than letters - around it.
• Put underscores or digits around it, however, and it sails right through.
• Inserting markup instead of text - in this case, an empty [ b ][ /b ] - bypasses the problem as well.

Penicillinsurrogatextraktfabrikationsanlagenwartungstechnikerverzweiflungsgrund

Looks like the trigger's exactly to have a word starting with penicillin (case insensitive) in the raw data ...

[Sunflower]

Great analysis, JoB!  It seems like a workaround to the 403 problem is pretty easy... Until There's A Cure ^(tm).

I got repeated 403 errors about 10 days ago, when I was trying to send someone a PM.  It didn't involve pen-icillin (I never had the occasion to use that word on the Forum till now).  However, since we were discussing health issues, I used the word "pill." Could it be another P-word?

EDIT:  No, "pill" seems to publish without a problem.
Well, now that we know to be on the alert, and we're saving copies of any text we post/PM, it shouldn't be too hard to catch other instances of the 403 problem if it recurs. 

[hushpiper]

Small development: under the theory that there was some sort of anti-pharmacy-spam measure at fault in the 403 mystery, I did some testing and found that via-gra also triggers the issue, as does cia-lis (though it's not consistent). So it does look like an anti-spam filter of some kind, though frankly not a very good one. Eich, did you put anything like that in place at any point?

Additionally, attempting to preview a post with one of those words in it also redirects you to a 403, which is useful for troubleshooting at least.

[Eich]

Small development: under the theory that there was some sort of anti-pharmacy-spam measure at fault in the 403 mystery, I did some testing and found that via-gra also triggers the issue, as does cia-lis (though it's not consistent). So it does look like an anti-spam filter of some kind, though frankly not a very good one. Eich, did you put anything like that in place at any point?

Additionally, attempting to preview a post with one of those words in it also redirects you to a 403, which is useful for troubleshooting at least.

Nope.  That must've been there from the beginning.

[hushpiper]

Might be something on the host's end, to prevent spam/hacking via form submissions and protect their servers. The mirror of the site on my webhost doesn't appear to have that issue. *shrugs*