1654098 - Spelling suggestions include racist epithets (CW: offensive language)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect, P5)

Description

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

It appears that Bug 366077 has regressed in the past ten years. A customer reported this to my product team, so passing it along here.

STR:

• Using en-US, and probably en-GB etc.
• Open a page with a text field (e.g., Bugzilla).
• Type 'aigga'.
• Open the spelling suggestion dialog.

Expected:

• "taiga" is shown as the only option.

Actual (with apologies for being explicit here):

• "nigga" is the first suggestion.

I believe from reading that old bug that the expected behavior is that offensive words are recognized (and thus not underlined) but will not be suggested.

Looking at the HunSpell dictionaries, there are a number of alternatives also present in the dictionary. A brief attempt to permute to hit others (e.g., "aigger") did not succeed, so this might be — indeed, I hope it is — an incomplete filter.

This has been reproduced in ~68 and I still see it in current Nightly, so marking as trunk.

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

I found this particular variant omitted in this wordlist, which I suspect flows through the mainstream browsers, so I sent a PR:

https://github.com/en-wl/wordlist/pull/288

Comment 2

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

The equivalent fix in m-c would be to put a ! at the end of

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/extensions/spellcheck/locales/en-US/hunspell/en-US.dic#l36834

and

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/extensions/spellcheck/locales/en-US/hunspell/en-US.dic#l36837

and presumably the same in the 'orig' directory:

extensions/spellcheck/locales/en-US/hunspell/dictionary-sources/orig/en_US-custom.dic

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 1654098 - fix a few racist epithets missing 'exclude from suggestions' annotation, r?Mossop

Comment 4

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a5367aeaffc8
fix a few racist epithets missing 'exclude from suggestions' annotation, r=mossop

Comment 5

[Andreea Pavel [:apavel]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a5367aeaffc8

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The patch landed in nightly and beta is affected.
:Gijs, is this bug important enough to require an uplift?
If not please set status_beta to wontfix.

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Comment on attachment 9169172 [details]
Bug 1654098 - fix a few racist epithets missing 'exclude from suggestions' annotation, r?Mossop

Beta/Release Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: People get racist spellcheck suggestions
• Is this code covered by automated tests?: No
• Has the fix been verified in Nightly?: No
• Needs manual test from QE?: No
• If yes, steps to reproduce:
• List of other uplifts needed: None
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): Just tweaking some flags in the default en-US dictionary
• String changes made/needed: n/a

Comment 8

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Comment on attachment 9169172 [details]
Bug 1654098 - fix a few racist epithets missing 'exclude from suggestions' annotation, r?Mossop

approved for 80.0b8

Comment 9

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/ae955a724ecf