Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

That question about scammers

I'm really confused, folks. Can you explain to me how putting this in quote marks brought it "up to code"?

My guess is that the original phrase was "bulls--t detector," or something along those lines.

"crap"

Okay. That kind of clears it up for me, though I'm not sure why they didn't adjust whatever word came before the word "detector" and put that in quotes instead...

But it will probably all make perfect sense in the morning, after I've slept in properly.

C is for wrote:Okay. That kind of clears it up for me, though I'm not sure why they didn't adjust whatever word came before the word "detector" and put that in quotes instead...

I wondered that too, but then I tried to think of a good alternative and drew a blank. (It's actually pretty interesting, from a linguistic standpoint, because it's largely about the connotation of the word, not the denotation, which makes it hard to find a good substitute.)

There was just too much "crap" in that question and answer so the Editors felt like it needed to be changed...

Did that clarify anything or just confuse you more, C4?

Interesting...

Katya wrote:I tried to think of a good alternative and drew a blank.

I did that for a while today too, and didn't come up with something I'd have been happy with. "Untoward claims" detector is just not the same, not least because it's not the most appropriate application of "untoward" (but I am in love with that word). "Suspicious claims" detector?

"Scam" seems like a good alternative to me.