How 'Art' got us in trouble with Tea Party supporters, and opponents

From the lessons learned department: 

We had difficulty over Labor Day weekend at TheGazette.com with a glitch in an automated system that filters words that get you bounced from our comments sections. No offensive words were being used in any of the comments people were making in these particular instances, but people were getting notices that their comments were banned.

The glitch was fixed on Saturday, Sept. 3, but an explanation is due. 

The filter was picking up portions of words and then interjecting then into unintended, similar words. So we had this real example: someone had been using a fake name of “Art” so the commenter was banned. The filter then detected “art” in the word “party”. This resulted in comments anyone calling the Tea Party by name being banned.

You can imagine the responses, claiming bias. Never mind that the range of commenters spanned from Tea Party supporters and to Tea Party opponents. People thought they were banned for political reasons. We also heard from people using their real names per our commenting policy who thought they were being treated unfairly. I made a comment on one conversation thread on Saturday to explain what was happening.

The tech person who worked on this from his home Saturday afternoon suggested ways to take care of the problem. Big on that list: moderate commenters by e-mail addresses, not names.