Monday, May 19, 2008

BBC profanity lists - WhatDoTheyKnow

BBC profanity lists - WhatDoTheyKnow

Sadly, my friend Richard's FOI attempt to get the BBC to release a canonical list of naughty words has hit a glitch 'because the BBC and the other public service
broadcasters are covered by the Act only in respect of information held for purposes “other than
those of journalism, art or literature” '.

Boo.

Also, it's really rather rude to add (sic) after the mis-spellings of the original correspondant, don't you think?

5 comments:

Martin Belam said...

That's a shame - I used to have a copy of that on my laptop, and the file that blocked known pr0n sites that otherwise got through the anti-pr0n filters on web search. To be honest, the BBC's profanity filters are not that interesting. There isn't anything on there that you wouldn't expect to see.

kim said...

I think I probably do somewhere, too - and the pdf of the top 20 bad words, all ranked pop-pickers style.

It's entertaining trying to get auntie to swear, though :)

Jason Cartwright said...

The CBBC bad words filter was always a fun read.

A Google search for a swear words with "site:bbc.co.uk" yields lots of band names, some unfiltered UGC, and best of all a SWF where a naughty developer has sworn repeatedly.

kim said...

Heh, the SWF is hilarious.

I'm quite sad - I was responsible for one of the three sanctioned uses of the word 'Cunt' on bbc.co.uk for a long while, but now the comedy guide is gone, it's no longer there... :(

Bods said...

I always liked the old profanity filter we had on the old message boards in 2000. Every time someone put in Terry Wogan or Greg Dyke, the profanity filter automatically put the message into pre-moderation :)