Please, remove the word "negro" from the profanity filter

For new users who speak Spanish it’s quite confusing to have that word caught by the filter. Ideally we would have a different filter for each language, but for now removing the word from the filter is the easiest solution.

6 Likes

I wonder what is the point of having that filter in the first place. In my experience as a moderator, only good those filters do is boosting creativity: people learn how to use Unicode diacritics and invisible punctuation in their profanities as well as how to rephrase their insults in a way that does not trigger the filters. For stopping abusive speech, though, filters do not do much.

Granted, filters can stop one from cursing accidentally and serve as a warning that a certain kind of language is prohibited. Which can be useful in a place where responsible adults converse with well-behaving children. But I somehow doubt I’ll ever see such a place full of those mythical creatures. :slight_smile:

Edit: Ah, I keep forgetting this thing is optional on OGS. Noting wrong with having it, then.

3 Likes

We use a third party filter which is aimed at English. I’m not sure that we can safely modify it, but I’ll tag @anoek (our resident code lord) to get his opinion.

In the meantime, you can turn the filter off in your settings if you’d rather not see it.

4 Likes

If the profanity filter can be turned off in the settings then it’s at least plausible that it can be customised for different languages.

It’s unfortunate that it’s necessary in the first place but quite understandable. Such a language specific feature deserves some customisability on such a language agnostic service.

2 Likes

Actually the default is wrong.

The profanity filter is great to have as an opt-in for users with special needs (e.g. they are too young, or they are especially vulnerable to being triggered etc.).

As a general rule, if there is a feature and you don’t need it, you should also not have to suffer its negative side-effects.

1 Like

Mh, I’d think that everybody except for those too young ones should be able to find it and switch it off — the young ones might not even know what “profanity” is …

1 Like

The problem is not being able to disable the filter, it is that the site is broken by default for spanish users. Of course this only affects a minority of users, but it gets tiring to tell new users that if they want to understand what’s being written they should disable the profanity filter.

1 Like

Imagine a new user watching a game and someone comments “Black is better”, the new user would see “$#%^& is better”

Of course he can disable the filter, but he shouldn’t need to do it just to read a random comment. If you are worried about the children, then you can ask the age when you register and enable the filter if they are underage (unless they speak spanish, of course :wink:

1 Like

I totally agree with what you say and that something should be done here, have notified @anoek so that he knows there’s something going on here.


But “ask the age when you register”? :joy: I can’t imagine that this could work in any reliable way except if we’d ask for Credit Card number or something.

Oh, please don’t. One thing OGS is doing right is not asking for any personal information it does not need to know. Words like “black” and “white” are not exactly adult content, we just have to find some way not to block them by default.

“And after %$#%^ C5, White’s position becomes hopeless”. I like it! :slight_smile: