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Language Filter?

Carson

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I personally am not offended by any specific words or language, but this board has many younger viewers, and the amount of language that could be considered as offensive by some seems to be growing.

I am unfamiliar with the inner working of vbulletin, but I recall an option in phpBB to censor specific words and replace them with whatever words the admin chooses. I think that in respect of many of our younger viewers, we should consider this option.
 

StachuK1992

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I personally am not offended by any specific words or language, but this board has many younger viewers, and the amount of language that could be considered as offensive by some seems to be growing.

I am unfamiliar with the inner working of vbulletin, but I recall an option in phpBB to censor specific words and replace them with whatever words the admin chooses. I think that in respect of many of our younger viewers, we should consider this option.
Don't we already have this?
I was pretty sure we did.
 

4Chan

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Im sure that pentrixter tested the filter in your sandbox thread.

The less vulgar words remain, but the more vulgar words like "****" are filtered.

(i hope that was censored, and i dont get a ban.)
 

4Chan

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As i recall, Joel Van Noort used to have an expletive in his signature.

Perhaps if this website was only perused by mature, mildly intelligent people this wouldnt be a problem.

It seems that problems arose when the newbie crowd started to come in.
 

IamWEB

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Everyone's a beginner at some point.
Things would only be 'newbie free' in the very beginning, when the site was first made by experienced cubers and advertise to their by experienced cubers.

Eventually people come that are beginners, that's not a problem.
The problems in immaturity, and immaturity =/= newbie.
 

miniGOINGS

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Yea, I have to admit, I used to be such a n00b, it was horrible. I think I was inspired by Stephan to use full sentances, correct grammer, and not using the ,, anymore.

Of course, this wont stop people from posting vulgar words in other languages.
 

qqwref

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I don't believe that young people get hurt by seeing curse words - surprisingly young people use them all the time in real life anyway - but I can definitely see how parents could be worried about that kind of stuff, and I know that there are a few older people who are legitimately offended by them. However, we do have a swear filter - it doesn't catch every possible instance of swearing, but you really never can (because then you run the risk of filtering words that are not intended as swears).

I think the best solution would be to use a swearfilter that blocks obvious common ones (I assume we do this anyway), and accept that not everything will be filtered, but hand out warnings and temporary bans to anyone who deliberately tries to evade it. (For instance, if "cube" was a swear word, we should filter "cube" to "****", but if someone deliberately writes "c*be" or "c ube" or "cübe" or something like that then they should be punished for trying to evade the filter.)
 

LNZ

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I'm sure there are addons that can filter out bad words. Just do a search on google and I'm sure you find at least one utility.

There are ways to dodge language filters and some of the methods are quite novel and different. And as computer software still does not have learned "context", filters may ban some variations but let some others through.

Example #1: Free under communial kings or carry under no trees.

Example #2:
One example is 4655434B. Can you guess what this is? A computer filter will think it is just some random number or string and let it pass but those humans who know hexadecimal ASCII will now this string. I leave it to you to find out.

Filtering software is dumb too. A computer can't tell the differing context of the following but humans can.

Breast
Breast cancer
Breast fillet chicken
Breasts

Test:

Breast cancer is a leading killer of women in the western world. To survive breast cancer, women are asked to have both breasts examined by a doctor or by them selves every two years.

Columbine (infamous high school in Littleton, Colorado)
Columbines (a Pascall's product)
Columbine (purple plant, Colorado's floral emblem)
Columbine (a character in comme-del-arte pantomine plays)
Columbine (A infamous school massacre)

Test:

A bit from: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/1071/34220

Columbine wears a delicate djellabah of multi-colored silk which melts into the perfumed air. Golden hair hangs in ringlets under a wimple which highlights only her daintily painted features. Her hands are like rare and fragile bisque. What a pair! Columbine and Harlequin.

A computer would probably ban he whole link and this post but us humans can clearly see thw word "Columbine" is being used in a nice way here.
 

shelley

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There is a basic swear filter in place, and I see people occasionally bypassing it by substituting characters (as qqwref showed) or simply inserting HTML tags between letters. In other forums such obviously deliberate censor bypassing is grounds for moderation.
 
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