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Word censorship

MaxMMaxM
edited May 2007 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
Hello friends, I want to request for a extension with which we can apply some word ban rule in vanilla. So, that we can avoids words like f**k ..you know what i mean LOL! Can anyone please some extension for this purpose?? Thanks a ton for your help friends :D
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Comments

  • Mr DoMr Do
    why?
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    Transmorgifier
  • MaxMMaxM
    @Mr Do - Sometime i need this addon when people use some bad language in posts ;-) @Wallphone - Thanks a lot, i think it will server the purpose :-D
  • Mr DoMr Do
    yes, i got that. its why you feel the need to. if you exchange fuck with f**k, people will still know the intent. It changes nothing.
  • StashStash ✭
    Well you could be more creative and change it so it says something like "what the flux capacitor are you talking about?" :D

    Some people don't like swearing, others can't deal with it - if it's his forum he can restrict what he likes...
  • Mr DoMr Do
    im sorry but its just fekking silly. I would really like to hear a good argument for doing it..
  • WandererWanderer
    What about if you have promised family-safe content?
    What about if you think swearing is a sign of a vocab-challenged undesirable individual.

    Posted: Monday, 30 April 2007 at 9:32PM

  • bjrnbjrn
    @ Mr Do - It's basically a passive way to monitor the tone of conversations which is very easy to implement. Doing word replacement seems a bit silly to me though. I personally find that there are many things you can say that are much more offensive than a single swear word.

    As for Wanderer's second point, if you don't want vocabulary challenged people in your forums, you really need something more advanced. Something that does frequency analysis of words. I think words like "cool" and "awesome" are likely to be far better indicators than swear words of a limited vocabulary.
  • Mr DoMr Do
    edited April 2007
    1 Family safe content? First of all, kids know more swear words than you do. Second, this is the internet, cushion it how much you want, they can and will find far worse things that someone saying shit (sidenote what on earth is the big deal with this word?) Thirdly, replacing the word with a madeup word that you can still guess the original is silly as original sin. The intent is still there and intention must be the problem. If your too delicate to SEE a specific cluster of letters you should live in a padded cell and certainly keep away from the internet.

    2. Vocab-challenged undesirables? Ban them. Or Ignore them. Or delete their posts. Or make fun of them. Or dont invite them to your elitist forum in the first place. Or just let their post stay and leave it to the reader to skip over "undesirable" content.

    3 at Bjrn. I totally agree, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. Someone could in a roundabout way show extreme racism without actually using the key word. If you are goning to moderate, it only (to me) makes sense to do so manually, and by kicking out the offender and removing the offending post.

    4. Sure you could make up a complex automatic system for counting the number of bad words and then banning them on reaching a certain level, but this is (to me) equally silly. Dont censor people. Let them show the world the side they want. Ignorant people will be ignored. If you have a forum for kids and need to keep away the pedophiles (as one user of vanilla here has mentioned as a case), then what you need is a team of moderators to ban and remove. And preferably a better system of permanent bans.

    5. Censorship is bad. (Ack what a terrible design, but it was the first hit on google and it will serve its purpose)
  • KrakKrak New
    What if he wanted to censor other things, not swear words. Say things like drug names, other company names, other company applications, etc... Copyrighted material maybe I dunno. The uses are endless. Maybe, he just really wants to fsck with his members and swap words around on them.

    And just because you can still see the word - f**k or fsck, it changes the tone entirely. "You fucking idiot" does not come off the same way as "You fscking idiot". One implies more hate, the other was just used to add emphases. IMO anyways.
  • bjrnbjrn
    Meh. A rose by any other name. I don't really think there's a difference in tone when it comes to fuck, f**k, fsck, or any other variant. What changes the tone of a conversation is the context it is said in, and there are many things that are much worse than just a casual swear word. You can get really ugly flames and snipings on forums without any cursing involved at all. And you can have really pleasant discussions with cursing in it. It all depends on how the words are used.

    If MaxM wants to change what people type on his forum and impose some kind of censorship, that's fine, it's his forum and he can do what he pleases. And perhaps it's the right solution for his forum, I wouldn't know. But to think that replacing fuck with f**k will automatically solve any problems you have with deteriorating discussions seems a bit naive to me. You will always need to keep an eye on things, and not rely blindly on word-swapping.

    But as I said, doing it might work for MaxM, it all depends on the forum and the members and how they react. If they are like me, it probably wouldn't change much (because the members wouldn't be that bothered about the cursing in the first place). If they are more like Krak, and find fsck a nicer word than fuck, then it might be a very good (and easy) solution.
  • SlashedZeroSlashedZero
    Ahaha, I've never seen so much swearing on this forum. That's pretty funny :)
  • WandererWanderer
    Quote: Mr Do
    pic Family safe content? First of all, kids know more swear words than you do. pic
    I don't know about that, I've been around a while and I made up quite a few expletives over the years.
    Just because you know a lot of swear words does not mean you need to use them.
    I read somewhere a while back (when I was in college) that there is a direct correlation between the level of intelligence and the amount of expletives that one regularly utters.

    It didn't mean much to me at the time, however over the years I have been convinced that; in-control, intelligent, cool, calm and collected people do not need to swear in order to express themselves.

    Posted: Tuesday, 1 May 2007 at 8:24PM

  • Mr DoMr Do
    edited May 2007
    Qoute: Krak
    "You fucking idiot" does not come off the same way as "You fscking idiot".

    This may or not be true if the author changes the word. But if I know when reading it that that pretend work was exchange by the forum, the intent of the author is still the word itself. If you really wanted this kind of deemphasis of the word, it demands that the forum does NOT do it automatically, so you can know its the original intent of the author.

    Qoute: Krak
    Say things like drug names, other company names, other company applications, etc... Copyrighted material maybe I dunno. The uses are endless.

    What? Like exchanging all Coca Cola with C**a C**a? This is IMHO even more silly. What does turning heroine into the funny powder do? Maybe you want to replace all This forums sucks! with This forum is great! Censorship is a thing of dictatorships and has no place in a modern, free society. Having rules on a forum that states your forum is not the place to swear or talk about drugs or slander named companies, thats a way to do it. Automatically changing words is the wrong tactic.
  • WallPhoneWallPhone
    I was once a member of a community that had to munge company and brand names. Orfice Despot, Rusty Stove, Tarjet etc. The idea was that the brand owners would search the net to find out what people do with their products, and some would take measures to prevent the members from legally obtaining the items for free. So we munged names to help prevent brand owners from finding out via a search engine that their unsold merchandise was making it to the dumpster without being destroyed first.
  • StashStash ✭
    The family safe comment is a good point as there is software out there that blocks on exactly that kind of criteria. Perhaps the majority of your forum is perfectly well behaved and it just saves the odd comment here and there from making your site banned by nanny software - then it's worth it no?

    I think the point here has to really be that *some* people want this functionality for their own reasons, and that's reason enough. Also, it can be fun replacing words with other words, just like it says on the transmogrifier page :)
  • bjrnbjrn
    Yeah. Replacing "heroin" with "funny powder" actually does sound like fun. Now I just need to get people to start talking about heroin first! Hilarity will ensue!
  • lechlech ✭
    Just replace the single word replacements with multiple random arrays, then redefine the dictionary to snag multiple random words. Eventually all posts will look like the spam you get intended to trick a Bayesian filter.
  • Mr DoMr Do
    I don't mean to offend, but is really the critical thinking of people in such a bad state? Again, don't hate for for asking, but are you Americans? Where I come from, censor is a sign that something is NOT how it is suppose to be. If everything is honkeydory and good, the truth would be just fine, no? If you suspect censorship in the information you receive, that should start the red alert alarm..

    I really cant stress this enough, do not do this! It is going down a path you should away as the plague. There are other ways to keep your forum family safe or the content on-topic.
  • WandererWanderer
    I'm not American, I'm Australian and if coming to my house and swearing is your idea of "how it's supposed to be" then I have every right to do something about it.

    That is not censorship, I'm not stopping you from expressing yourself, just stopping you from offending others.

    Someone famous once said... your freedom stops when it infringes on someone else's.

    Posted: Thursday, 3 May 2007 at 12:04AM

This discussion has been closed.