Overzealous profanity filters

[Rapscallion]

It's worth noting that most people use harsh language occasionally as emphasis, and that's what it's for. As long as it's only occasional on CS.com, we don't really mind. The site's for venting, after all.

Rapscallion

[Lace Neil Singer]

One site I went on had a filter that replaced really nasty racial slurs like the n word with "fantastic person"; mainly cuz the only people who'd use those words anyway were trolls.

It looks really hilarious when someone posts, "The admin is a fantastic person!" XD

[BrenDAnn]

Ugh...,my favorite online game (YoVille, if you must know) uses the word Yadda to censor things. Problem is, they do the whole words within words thing, so words like Classy, Assassin, etc turn into clyadday, yaddayaddain, etc. Very annoying. Funny thing, one of the items released was a campfire. People trying to create events to sell it in game soon found themselves in trouble. Why? The 'cam' in campfire was a censored word. The game creators renamed the item to bonfire, after a LOT of complaints!

[Amanita]

I actually left one online Pagan community because of overzealous censorship and swear filtering- we were talking about something, and The Learning Channel, aka TLC came up. I mentioned how much their programming had gone downhill in my opinion, saying "They used to show lots of kickass documentaries, now it's nothing but makeovers, childbirth, and home decorating."

I got bitched at by one of the mods, saying how dare I use such an awful word as "Kickass", because *Gasp!* one member of the site was 13. (FYI- as far as I knew, there was no board rule prohibiting that word)

The next time I tried to post on that site, I found that the swear filter was now so overzealous that I couldn't even use the word "assist" without it being censored.

So I said the hell with it and simply stopped posting there. I didn't have much use for the idea of foam-padding a community of adults because of the presence of one teenager, who as far as I know, had never complained about anyone's language, and most likely was exposed to far worse words at school every day.

[HYHYBT]

Substitution's worse. Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil, but how do you talk about them if the word now means "dick"?

Funny thing, one of the items released was a campfire. People trying to create events to sell it in game soon found themselves in trouble. Why? The 'cam' in campfire was a censored word. The game creators renamed the item to bonfire, after a LOT of complaints!

Why oh why would they take that approach rather than removing a totally NOT swear word from the filter?

For that matter... for the word-within-word type in general, I understand wanting to catch variations... but hook up a dictionary or something so that if it's part of a legitimate word it still gets through! Notice, too, that virtually no site that does this will listen to suggestions or complaints on the subject, even if they're otherwise responsive.

[fireheart17]

One site I went on had a filter that replaced really nasty racial slurs like the n word with "fantastic person"; mainly cuz the only people who'd use those words anyway were trolls.

It looks really hilarious when someone posts, "The admin is a fantastic person!" XD

Oh I should do that at some point.

A sub-group of Habbo Hotel I mentioned earlier is known as "retros", which are basically rip-offs of the original Habbo. Main difference is that unlike Habbo, which involves real-world currency, the retros don't. (and the legality of it is questioned by the way)

ANYWAY, the retros REALLY do not like Habbo and REALLY don't like one another. So whenever I used to play and I'd mention "Habbo" to someone, sometimes it would come up as "I like animal porn" or similar. O.o

[jackfaire]

My phone has a verbal input option if I don't feel like using the touch screen keyboard. It censors my swear words.

I mean seriously my texts that I am sending to my friends and it's telling me I can't swear. Fuck that.

[woodensunshine]

About six years ago or so, I was playing Runescape with the guy I was dating at the time. This girl was hitting on him and he was getting super uncomfortable, so I took advantage of Runscape's censoring (when you type a verboten word, it turns into stars) and typed a bunch of words at the girl with some "starred words" thrown in to sound like I was actually angry...I really just typed a bunch of stars, no actual swearing. Girl got lost and I was the knight...princess in shining armor XD

[wolfie]

There's an online golf game which is pretty popular (and pretty good, too). Well, they won't let you use the word "hole." Yeah, let's see how far you can get in a golf game without using the word "hole."

And, no, there's no real reason beyond laziness, really, that results in these overly-strict filters. The site picks up some one-size-fits-all solution and then just slaps it in without any adjustments or tweaks to make it actually fit their purpose.

^-.-^

Let's see - you tee off, take a couple of fairway shots, get on the green, and are 5 feet from the OOPS!

The "canned filter with no thought" is implemented on the computers for driver use at my workplace. I check up a couple of "alternative" webcomics that are too obscure to be put into the database, but any site that deals with "Vehicles" is banned - so I can't check out the local dealer's site to verify their service hours when the Peterbilt of Natural Selection needs work. Also, our pay statements are e-mailed, but webmail use is banned - how are we supposed to print them out?

One site I go on censors the words "weed" "crack" "chink" and "grass". Yes, I know they are offensive words in one context, but surely it can be safely left to the moderators to work out whether they are being used in that context?

After you weed your vegetable garden, you need to chink the gaps between logs in your cabin. Dry grass is a good material for this. Also, it is dangerous to use a tool that has a crack in the handle.

We used to have a swear filter on CS, but I think we stopped using it for pretty much the same reasons. It's easy to block certain words that don't have other meanings, but it gets a bit tricky with the ones that can mean perfectly innocent things. I remember one time someone tried to post something about Dick van Dyke, and got censored twice. I had to laugh when, years later, I saw the same sort of thing on Family Guy. "It's the BLEEP van BLEEP show! Starring BLEEP van BLEEP!"

I recall in the Risks digest many years back, a censor system was set up in a closed-captioning environment to substitute "lesser" swear words. One that cropped up was "Starring Jerk van Gay" (yep, Dick van Dyke).

Another item dealt with an RCS setup that suddenly started breaking code. It turned out that someone had installed a filter that deleted any "naughty" words that went over TCP/IP, including ones that had been "mangled" to hide them from the filter. Of course, one block of code contained something along the lines of this fragment:

#define MENU_ROWS /* Number of rows in the main menu */
#define MENU_COLS /* Number of columns in the main menu */

The offending term was replaced by spaces before it got to the code repository. Needless to say, a retrieved copy would break on compile.

[BrenDAnn]

Substitution's worse. Sometimes a pencil is just a pencil, but how do you talk about them if the word now means "dick"?

Why oh why would they take that approach rather than removing a totally NOT swear word from the filter?

For that matter... for the word-within-word type in general, I understand wanting to catch variations... but hook up a dictionary or something so that if it's part of a legitimate word it still gets through! Notice, too, that virtually no site that does this will listen to suggestions or complaints on the subject, even if they're otherwise responsive.

Their reasoning for censoring that word in particular was so that people wouldn't be starting events asking for girls to have dirty webcam chats with them. Understandable, but damn annoying!

[flybye023]

One of the sites I used to read would censor bad words even if they were part of a larger word. Like "ass" was always censored even if it was in "assistant". The funniest was "cock" though. So you would end up with things like "I bought a new ****tail dress for a party tomorrow" or "Does anyone know how to make a ****tail out of grapes?" Used to drive me nuts.

[Nekojin]

"My aunt has a ****er spaniel!"

[flybye023]

"My aunt has a ****er spaniel!"

Exactly! You would be amazed at the number of words that have c-o-c-k somewhere in them.

[HYHYBT]

Here I had a post all typed out about how a side effect of any swear filter I created would be to force correct spelling... when I realized that would wreak havoc with names. Oh well.

[Nekojin]

Exactly! You would be amazed at the number of words that have c-o-c-k somewhere in them.

Well, at least with Cocker Spaniel, you can figure it out easily. But how many people know the proper name of the ****atiel?