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THIS IS THE TEST SITE OF EUROBRICKS!

Lego’s Overly Restrictive Signup Page

def

By def
in General LEGO Discussion

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def Grand Master

def

Posted
Posted

Mycucumber, Mypassionfruit, & Mygrapefruit are not allowed because...

legos-overly-restrictive-signup-page-8682-1271027308-1.jpg

If I were a parent (wait, I am! :hmpf: ) I would be angry that my kid was exposed to these words, and would have to ask daddy, "What's 'rape'?"

Nice one, Lego webpage design team :thumbdown:

<edit>

taken from here:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/legos-overly...ive-signup-page

Scroll down through the comments to see some of the stuff the Lego site lets through :laugh:

David Thomsen Mentor

David Thomsen

Posted
Posted

Wow... it should at least be programmed to recognise when a 'dirty' word is part of an innocent larger word. I'll never be able to look at fruit the same way again.

Next step... try to find something dirty that gets accepted because the software doesn't realise how dirty it sounds when you say it out loud.

Siegfried Grand Master

Siegfried

Posted
Posted

Well that's just silly. :tongue: So how did you discover this?

Wow... it should at least be programmed to recognise when a 'dirty' word is part of an innocent larger word.

Yeah. This is just lazy programming. Boo LEGO. Boo!

davee123 Rising Star

davee123

Posted
Posted
This is just lazy programming. Boo LEGO. Boo!

As a programmer, I have to disagree. It's a lot more difficult to verify that something, when seen by humans, will be interpreted in a particular way. In order to notice that "icumonyou" is bad versus "cucumber", which is good, you'd have to recognize that "cucubmer" is a word, and "icumonyou" is not. Now, while that might be feasible, what about someone who tries to use "cucumbor" or some other misspelling? Or other "innocent" things like "FinnishIthican", or people's names which don't have to be words at all?

In short, it's REALLY difficult to do this task automatically-- I can't blame LEGO's programmers. I blame management. As a programmer, I would try to explain how ludicrously impossible it is to filter out bad words AT ALL. But when management doesn't get it, they may still force you to do it anyway. I'm sure some higher-up DEMANDED that they disallow a list of swear words from usernames, and the grunt programmers had to do exactly that.

The better solution would have been to accept pretty much ANY username at all. Then, behind the scenes, red-flag any and all new usernames containing a HUGE list of buzzwords, which are passed off to a team of moderators that can spot innocent versus malicious usernames. If they're malicious, force them to change their username the next time they log in or visit the site. Most sites probably couldn't do this, since they don't have teams of moderators (they cost money!), but LEGO already HAS a bunch of moderators that spend their time evaluating LEGO's message boards, LEGO Factory content, and probably more. Put them to work!

DaveE

Siegfried Grand Master

Siegfried

Posted
Posted
As a programmer, I have to disagree.

I'm a programmer too. :wink: I've been programming in assembly language (among other things) professionally for 10+ years .

I understand it's a difficult task, but it's not impossible to do, and it wouldn't be hard to do it better than they have done. For example pick "bad" words then generate list of common words that contain those words. When someone selects a name look for those words in descending size order and remove them from the name. Then look for the "bad" words. This could be done in a matter of seconds, if that. Afterall, anagram tools can generate lists of 30,000 plus is a few seconds so this would be easy.

But I think at the core we actually agree; this is a silly idea in the first place. As I said; it's horribly managed. They have moderators (they must check all those reviews) so it'd be more appropriate to handle such issues there.

Erdbeereis Grand Master

Erdbeereis

Posted
Posted

That's very funny. :laugh:

I actually tried signing up there in the past and had the same problem. I could use Erdbeereis because it contains the word beer. :wacko:

Makes it really tough to get a username there, and then like everyone else you have to be Legofan1402985 or something.

Calanon Experienced

Calanon

Posted
Posted

Where is a facepalm smiley when you need one... seriously, some of these are just stupid. Michelle isn't allowed because it contains the word 'hell'. So what if it does? It isn't a bad word. :hmpf:

And then... you have the case of swear words, words which should be censored on a game with children playing on it, that are allowed.

Seriously LEGO... sort this out.

Rick Grand Master

Rick

Posted
Posted

I have my "firstnamelastname" as username, which luckily doesn't contain any inappropriate words.

But I agree with is silly and could easily be programmed correctly by having a dictionary of approved words. More importantly the cure appears worse than the disease, as it literally spells out the words that are not approved. Now, how does it handle inappropriate words in other languages? :tongue:

Rufus Grand Master

Rufus

Posted
Posted

This is funny, but sad at the same time. Why couldn't they just say 'Sorry, that username is not allowed' rather than highlighting the 'rude' word?

I feel very sorry for the people of Scunthorpe when this sort of thing happens :wink:

davee123 Rising Star

davee123

Posted
Posted
I understand it's a difficult task, but it's not impossible to do, and it wouldn't be hard to do it better than they have done.

My point is basically is that it's not necessarily the fault of some lazy programmer (though it could be). In my time as a web developer, I have fought hard against various mandates from above because they're stupid-- but sometimes, even though you tell management adamantly "No, that's a terrible idea, here's a better one", they go ahead and command you to do the terrible thing instead, and then you have no choice but to do it. Anyway, I wouldn't go blaming the programmers right away-- unless there's reason to believe that they're the ones who actually came up with the idea. More realistically, blame whoever is in charge of the LEGO website, for letting this happen.

They have moderators (they must check all those reviews) so it'd be more appropriate to handle such issues there.

EXACTLY. If you've GOT moderators, use them. If you want to invent some hair-brained scheme to prevent swears from getting into usernames, you're going to have problems. It's VERY hard to make this smart enough to be 99% effective and at the same time be subtle enough to mostly just affect people trying to abuse the system.

DaveE

CP5670 Veteran

CP5670

Posted
Posted

:laugh:

There were a lot of complaints about this in the LU beta signup on another forum I go to. It's still trivial to put in a disguised cuss word if you're actually trying to do that, so this only affects people who want to use normal words.

The Who Experienced

The Who

Posted
Posted

:laugh: That was absolutelt hilarious to read.

I agree with Rufus; that's all Lego would really have to do is just tell the username is not allowed, withoud underlining the 'rude' word.

Kliq Community Regular

Kliq

Posted
Posted

I have to admit I was busting out laughing while reading many of the things posted on the site. However, I have no idea what 'Po' means, which was apparently flagged. So any word that has a "P" followed by an "O" is banned from being a username. Some of these restrictions are hilarious, and others are ridiculous. Michelle is banned because of 'Hell', that one made me laugh quite a bit. :tongue:

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