Beserk Language Filter

[pocketwatch]

While a very admirable program in cleaning up the profanity on the message boards, the language filter is making life difficult for a few of us.
Gamers have already talked about how the language filter is rejecting certain words that have more than one meaning. The word for a small gap is also a racial slur. A wall used to hold back water is a derogatory term for lesbian.
I have had a problem with the filter finding a bad word in the middle of my username. I didn't even realize that it contained an offensive sequence of letters until people started quoting me and my name showed up as pockefemale genitaliach. Needless to say, this is rather disturbing.
I don't want to run around yelling DON'T QUOTE ME! but I don't want to terminate this account. Is there a way of changing my username or taking the word out of the filter?

[triffid]

Have you tried a space or an underscore or a dash or something? If you edit your profile, you'll see that "Username" and "Name" are separate entries, and the latter can be changed. :)

[The Prince of Cats]

Wow... I didn't realise Americans used that word. In the UK, it is typically used to mean 'silly person' rather than 'female parts' but then we have many words which describe genitals but are also perfectly normal words. Like the word most commonly used for the sack-like male parts is also another word for preists.

[Malachi, the Lich King]

Easy enough to edit the name that is displayed to the viewers on the boards. I'm not sure if you can alter your actual user name or not but that part really isn't the problem anyway.

[RawBearNYC]

you can't alter your user name. I probably could, were I so inspired, but that would likely break some referential links, and I'd really rather not have to try to manage all of the referential integrity issues with changing your name.

[Samiam303]

Well, you COULD just look at reworking the filter a bit... ;) :P

[pocketwatch]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. no, Americans don't know that word. In fact, I didn't even realze that it existed until I saw the alterations the language filter made to my name and another gamer explained the filter to me. Once I knew about the language filter, the definition of the word was fairly obvious. Language is funny that way. The word 'dude' actually means a pimple on a horse's rear. Weird, huh?
Don't filters work by identifying a sequence of letters and replacing them with a more appropriate term? I know WotC altered one of their old edition books, changing mage to wizard. Unfortunately, this change affected words like damage and image, making them dawizard and iwizard. Would it be possible add a longer sequence of letters to the filter, changing the altered word back to the original or a slightly modified version? For instance, turning pockefemale genitaliach into pocket watch would be very appreciated, if it's not too much trouble.

[Adghar]

That would make **** t wat. Maybe make it so that the sequence of letters to detect could be changed to "**** ", " **** ", and "****."?

[pocketwatch]

Adghar, I think the language filter got hold of your post, because it makes no sense to me. Sorry.
My proposal was to change the censored term "pockefemale genitaliach" as a whole back into "pocket watch", a slightly altered version of my username. By adding "pockefemale genitaliach" to the word filter and making it turn into "pocket watch", I think the problem would be solved, and the original language filter objection to my username would be overruled while maintaining the censorship of the objectionable word it contains. Has anyone else had a problem like this?

[The Prince of Cats]

I once got banned from a message board for testing their profanity-filter. I was in 'one of those moods' and typed the text "Scvnthorpe Assassination", only to be told that three violations in one post was an instant ban.

(I knew about the 'Scvnthorpe problem' from an AOL tech-support story; people from Scvnthorpe could not create AOL accounts as the company had a profanity-check during sign-up which could identify certain words and automatically reject them, which lead residents to be advised to spell their city 'Scundthorpe' when creating their accounts)

edit: This site hates the name of that northern place too... (using 'v' in place of 'u')

[Premier]

Or instead of forcing everyone to use silly circumnavigation techniques, the leadership could just admit that the filter with its current setting is simply unfeasible and change it accordingly.

I mean, no offense to anyone, but after Belkar talking about his Rod of Lordly Might and how it might extend if you press the right button, the whole "This is a strictly PG-13 site"-argument sounds a bit, well, hypocritical...

[Zherog]

::)

[Mas_Sinoda]

And of course, there was when Elan wanted to "be invisible" and Haley's comments on his "rapier" and "The Trouser Titan" and the constant violence. But personally, I'm glad it's like this.

[Praetorian]

be thankful though that a lot of the language that would be superfluously altered ISN'T simply because they don't have to worry about "inclusive" language. For instance, adding a word to the filter will filter that word, but then if it's PART of a word (like pocket watch) it won't be added unless a wildcard denotation is added to the filter. Then ANY combination of those characters will be filtered.

I'm an admin on a forums much like this (not hardly the traffic that you guys put up with though) and we tend to use wildcard denotation only when it turns into a problem.

Heh, as far as the rod of lordly might goes - Rich answered that already, it's actually an item in the game.

Don't forget the jewels in Haley's hotel room either.

[pocketwatch]

WOOOOHOOOOO!
I changed the way my name appears on the screens after fiddling with my profile. Sadly, several people have already sparked confusion on a few threads by quoting me, and people have started typing pocket watch when they mean mod edit: do not circumvent the language filter on the boards. Oh well. All's well that ends well.

[Annarrkkii]

BWAHAHAHAHA!

****.

See? Isn't it great? I just swore! I said the s-word! But that's not what appeared!

[JoseB]

Seriously speaking, I think that the language filter iis not working as it should, by detecting "bad words" that are part of *perfectly standard words* and substituting them wantonly.

Examples: The title of a Terry Pratchett novel, "N i g h t w a t c h", is shown as "Nighfemale genitaliawatch". I do not find it acceptable, especially because it draws attention to something that, normally, is not noticed when you read the title!!

This post in the comics forum:




<...>
there are other sources of divine power other than those godsdamned gods, like nature (I like druids more than clerics). or, being an atheist cleric could be
their way of sticking it to the man, stealing divine power for their own ends, their sniggering, impious vocies lost in the babbling multitude of truely-beleiving, praying idiots.

<...>


So, s n i g g e r i n g is not an acceptable word?

When things like these happen, I guess that something is seriously broken with the language filter, and something has to be done with it.

Just my 2 eurocent!

[Zherog]

The problem is that the filter attached to YaBB doesn't differentiate between the word and when that word is "inside" another word.

sniggering is a perfectly acceptable word.

[RawBearNYC]

...and something has to be done with it.

You're logic is flawed. Nothing HAS to be done with it. You WANT something to be done, but it simply isn't high enough priority for us to bother with.

[JoseB]

You're logic is flawed. Nothing HAS to be done with it. You WANT something to be done, but it simply isn't high enough priority for us to bother with.



Possibly, possibly. It is still a bother, nonetheless, and it detracts from the experience of using these boards. At least in my opinion :)

[Rawhide]

Is it still true under the new rules that you can use a technique to bypass a filtered word, if the word is completely harmless (ie. part of a larger, completely unrelated and non-offensive word).

Examples:
pocketwatch
snigger
nightwatch

[RawBearNYC]

Is it still true under the new rules that you can use a technique to bypass a filtered word, if the word is completely harmless (ie. part of a larger, completely unrelated and non-offensive word).

Examples:
pocketwatch
snigger
nightwatch
yeah, as long as that technique doesn't get abused.

[Auggle]

Hmmm, Yup the same thing happend to me in the silly message board,
I said: I counter with (typed correctly)
And it said: "I female genitalier with" instead
It was a shock!
But it cleared up when I started a thread talking about the incident.
I doubt its just aiming at big words, but at mabe random people, because every one else was saying "I counter with" And it stayed perfectly the same
Mabe its something else than a filter, mabe it was a user.

[RawBearNYC]

Hmmm, Yup the same thing happend to me in the silly message board,
I said: I counter with (typed correctly)
And it said: "I female genitalier with" instead
It was a shock!
But it cleared up when I started a thread talking about the incident.
I doubt its just aiming at big words, but at mabe random people, because every one else was saying "I counter with" And it stayed perfectly the same
Mabe its something else than a filter, mabe it was a user.

No, the filter affects everyone equally all of the time. Most likely, you accidentally left the letter "o" out of the word counter. The resultant first four letters of that word woudl have been caught by the filter and changed the way you just indicated. when you went back and edited, I'm guessing you put the "o" back in and the filter didn't feel the need to change anything.

[Malachi, the Lich King]

I have noticed that if you quote from filtered posts you can see exactly what was written by the poster. I'm curious why that is. Is it because of when/where the filter is 'activated' in the posting process? Or does the offending word stay there to keep the filter active on it? I would have thought it would just change the word outright.

If nothing else though, I do catch a few more typos because of the word filter.

[Rawhide]

The original post remains intact, the filter dynamically parses the replacement words.

[Wardog]

You're logic is flawed. Nothing HAS to be done with it. You WANT something to be done, but it simply isn't high enough priority for us to bother with.


Is it likely that it would become a higher priority in the future, or that the number of "more important things" become fewer, and a change is made?

Because I too find it it not only frustrating, but I feel it actually draws attention to the obscenities (especialy when it catches a longer word containing something I didn't even realise was a swearword).

If masking some letters in a swearword is considered as serious as using an unmasked swear word, because people will still know what is being implied, then presumably bringing attention to a swearword by shoving a euphemism into an innocent word is just as bad.

I know some filters in some programs have an "ignore these words" feature. For example, the default swear filter in NWN screens out "ass", but specifically permits "assassin".

Would it be difficult to use such a system here?

[Jack Squat]

This forum's filter, while not the best, couldn't hold a match to other boards I use (the Discovery Channel ones). they have one filter for the entire site, and I use the Mythbuster's forum quite often, in which you can't say such words as "bang" or "suck" where these frequent the show, or ideas for it, but they may be considered offensive in other forums. we often use things like "the sound a firecracker makes" or "What a vacuum does" to avoid getting a thought out post stuck in the filter never to be seen again.
would the use of these be alright as long as it remains unoffensive?

[Jack Squat]

I know some filters in some programs have an "ignore these words" feature. For example, the default swear filter in NWN screens out "ass", but specifically permits "assassin".

Would it be difficult to use such a system here?

I would assume that you would include a space after the word, but then puctuation marks or running words together would work to let the word pass. while a good idea, no filter is perfect.

"no filter is perfect"
that's proabably going to be the most remembered/quoted phrase in this thread :P

[sithninjapirate]

I think the filter is fine. It's not as bad as alot of them, such as on a Heroclix board, you can't say **** Grayson, it's **** Grayson.