Okay, so lemme tell you ’bout this little project I tackled – banning words related to WWE. Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly. Buckle up, it’s a bit of a ride.
First things first, why? I was messing around with a forum thingy, and some folks were getting a little too… enthusiastic… about their favorite wrestlers. Trash talk is fine, but some of the terms were getting outta hand. So, the idea popped into my head: let’s try to filter some of this stuff out.
Step one: The List. Gotta have a list of words to ban, right? This is where it got interesting. I started with the obvious stuff: wrestler names, signature moves, stuff like “tables, ladders, and chairs.” Pretty standard. But then I dug deeper. WWE has its own slang, its own jargon. I had to hit up some wrestling forums (yes, I actually did that), scroll through a bunch of comments, and basically immerse myself in the wrestling world to figure out what words were being used in a negative or inflammatory way. It was a wild goose chase, but I ended up with a pretty comprehensive list. This thing kept growing, let me tell you.
Next: Implementation. I decided to use a simple text filter. I know, fancy, right? I looked into using regular expressions for more complex stuff like variations on the words, but honestly, for this project, I just wanted something quick and dirty. So, I wrote a little script that would scan any post for words on the banned list and replace them with asterisks. You know, the classic censor treatment. I wrote it in Python, ’cause that’s what I’m most comfortable with, and it was surprisingly straightforward.
The inevitable problems. Of course, nothing ever works perfectly the first time. I quickly realized that just replacing the whole word with asterisks wasn’t ideal. People would just figure out ways around it. Like, spelling “wrestler” as “wrestler with a 1 instead of an l”. So, I had to tweak the script to catch some of these variations. I also ran into issues with false positives. For example, the word “raw” is on the list because it’s the name of a WWE show, but it’s also a common English word. So, I had to add some context checking to the script to try to avoid censoring innocent uses of the word “raw.” Tricky stuff!
The results? It’s… okay. It definitely cut down on the blatant use of some of the more offensive terms. But it’s a constant arms race. People will always find new ways to say what they want to say. It’s like whack-a-mole. But hey, it was a fun little project, and I learned a thing or two about text filtering and the surprisingly complex world of wrestling slang. Maybe one day I’ll try to build something more sophisticated, but for now, this works… mostly.
Lessons Learned:
- Building a ban list is harder than it looks. You gotta really dig deep.
- People are clever when it comes to getting around filters.
- Context is everything. Figuring out how to handle context is the real challenge.
- Python is still my go-to for quick and dirty scripting.
Anyway, that’s the story of my WWE banned words adventure. It was a bit of a messy project, but I’m kinda proud of the results. Now, back to more important things, like figuring out what I’m having for dinner.
