I first checked out the Sahana Foundation and spent about 30 minutes searching for potential bugs or potential enhancements. I didn’t really find anything worth noting after about half an hour or so. I think that’s pretty telling considering that I don’t really have any stake or added-value for this organization at this point. I think they’re doing awesome work, but I might not be the right person to be helping them out at this point. However, I’ve bookmarked their site in the event that someone mentions anything remotely similar so that I can pass this site info along.

After my failed attempt with Sahana, I checked out Github.

https://github.com/wooorm/alex/issues/90

I looked through Github’s open source projects and clicked on the projects identified under Social Impact. I submitted an issue for Alex which is this cool idea to let users know when they’re using profanity, potentially offensive words, and incorrect pronoun use. I start typing in various things and decided to test out Islamist. Outside of that, this project sounds pretty complicated in regards to the threshold for splitting words or word location. I tested out faot and it was marked as profane and suggested using “gay”. However, if someone is using “faot”, I doubt that they’re attempting to refer politely to someone who is gay. Yet, when I typed in “gay”, it was also marked as profane. I don’t fully understand that logic, could just be providing a warning, but I think casting a wider net is more useful for an app trying to catch insensitive language.

Demo here: http://alexjs.com/#demo

I think the best part of this experience was the opportunity to check out all the social impact projects. There isn’t a ton out of there, but the projects all seem so cool! Contact Congress sends emails to members of Congress. Refuge Restrooms maps out restroom locations for trans people. This is awesome, particularly in light of HB2.