MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist

Potential Bowdlerization problems

We'll need to watch and make sure that filters like "p.h.o.n.e" do not cause Bowdlerization problems by blocking any word that happens to contain those letters in that order that is not actually "phone". I'd really much prefer if it were to block the word with any non-word characters between the letters. --Quasar (talk) 09:49, 14 July 2016 (CDT)

Try incorporating the \b and \W expressions? --Xymph (talk) 12:39, 14 July 2016 (CDT)

I'm not sure any such word actually exists in English. Would have to be stuff such as "pehiotnee" or "pcheownae" or whatever, it just doesn't seem likely. I used this to check just in case, padding both to the right and to the left with spaces (add and/or remove dashes on the URL) and there were no matches for any of the possible combinations starting or ending in p.h.o.n.e between nine and fifteen characters. I suppose it's not entirely impossible that a 16+ character word would fit, but if any actually exists, I suggest we nominate its discover to the Nobel prize of literature. --Gez (talk) 01:38, 15 July 2016 (CDT)

You're probably right in this case ;) --Quasar (talk) 07:56, 15 July 2016 (CDT)

US$0.02: Xymph and Gez make good points; sadly, obstructing the rare good edits is probably a necessary trade-off given we have a persistent issue confirmed by outside research.  If we feel ashamed, we could ameliorate by giving Editors tb-override (is anyone really going to make 200 approved changes as a sleeper account?).    Ryan W (usually gone) 09:35, 22 July 2016 (CDT)

BOMs

The Wikipedia Titleblacklist contains this rule:

.*\x{FEFF}.* <casesensitive> # Byte order mark

If you think it's worthwhile I can try adding it. I do not know if the version of MW we are on supports this syntax so it may not work. --Quasar (talk) 00:56, 7 January 2022 (CST)

If it works it would be helpful, and otherwise no loss. I wrote a script to query my local replication of the database and there are no BOMs left in page texts nor page/file titles. Running it daily to alert me of new arrivals, which are then quickly fixed. --Xymph (talk) 03:40, 7 January 2022 (CST)--Xymph (talk) 03:40, 7 January 2022 (CST)