HN Explorer

Ask HN: Popular Alternative to Urban Dictionary?

34 points by Memosyne ↗ HN
I recently came upon an unfamiliar slang word and, as I have often successfully done before, went on Urban Dictionary to find its 'dirty' definition but what I encountered made little sense in the negative context and read as though it was professionally defined. Surprised, I investigated and learned that Urban Dictionary is implementing a new initiative to reduce hate speech and as such is watering down definitions [1]. So now I'm wondering: is anyone familiar with an alternative resource that contains the 'dirty' slang that Urban Dictionary used to provide? All of the resources I've found so far don't come close to its coverage.

[1] https://urbandictionary.blog/post/2020-07-07-rethinking-the-dictionary/

9 comments

[ 472 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] thread
esperent
What was the term?

In any case, reading their blog post, this sounds like a positive change, although of course it depends on how it's implemented. But good for them for recognizing that action is needed.

howlgarnish
Have you tried Wiktionary?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cunt

You'll note that in addition to the literal meaning, it explains various other usages in depth as well. And it's fairly resistant to UD's unfortunate habit of having completely made-up words and definitions written by giggling teenagers.

Memosyne
Thanks, that seems good enough for my use case. Kind of unfortunate usage of the media wiki interface, though, as I find it a little tedious to quickly search for the most relevant definition.

Yeah, I know Urban Dictionary had stupid definitions but I was kind of relying on those giggling teenagers to help elucidate what other giggling teenagers were talking about.

emerged
Censoring urban dictionary would seem to completely contradict its purpose at its most fundamental level.
WalterGR
I’ve run a website called The Online Slang Dictionary since 1996, a few years before Urban Dictionary existed. It’s the original user-created slang dictionary on the web. My intention is for the site to be the ‘Wikipedia of slang’ - i.e. actual information backed up by facts.

I’ve never censored the dictionary per se, though I have edited user-submitted definitions to adhere to the dictionary’s overall tone.

http://onlineslangdictionary.com/

Unfortunately, the creator of Urban Dictionary worked at Google and Google employee(s) have intervened to ensure that only that site would appear at the top of Google SERPs. So there’s no “popular” alternative - by design.

(Re. my desire for the site to be a proper wiki: At present, only registered users can add new terms and definitions. I wish that weren’t the case, but with Google’s manual penalty in place, I simply don’t have the resources to deal with an anonymously-edited site...)

scott31
you don't even have https on the site, Google is right to lower your rank
WalterGR
It turns out that there are consequences when Google has a manual penalty in place against a website for almost a decade.

Technology moves on and the site owner may not have the financial resources to dedicate to the treadmill. If you’d like to learn something about the situation, then read http://onlineslangdictionary.com/pages/google-panda-penalty/ . Financial donations are, of course, always welcome.

Welcome to Hacker News!

PauloManrique
Better close Urban Dictionary then. People's activism are totally getting outta hand.