Profanity "filter"

I am not so delicate that I blush when I see a dirty word; I’ve used them myself. There’s a time and place for everything but the need to apply them during Go games is limited.

For example, I saw this in some game: "$!% you and your…".
I do not need to know what $
!% is hiding to know it’s very likely one typo away from funk (or maybe it’s a threaded fastening device).

In the context of such a sentence, one does not need to see the word to know it and what is being expressed. In general it is very objectionable and uncalled for. If the user has repeatedly entered an exclamation $!% and then says "$!% you" I am very certain the user is not thinking about applying torque.

I thought I’d look at the Terms of Service (or Code of Conduct) but can not find either. Where is it? I have further comments in mind but I’d like to read it first.

P.S. Thought I’d mention a fine album by Aimee Mann called @#%&*! Smilers. Any guesses?

1 Like

I’m super confused about this question? You know the profanity filter is optional right? As for the ToS, you can find it on the left side menu. Click “about” then go to “terms of service”. https://online-go.com/docs/terms-of-service

1 Like

In view of the fact that I missed the T.o.S. link and did not complete my thoughts because of that, some confusion is reasonable.

On this page where I am replying to you there is a top left icon that giives a menu of various Junk. At the lower left is a gear whose menu dos not contain About. I have to go to a higher level page to access the menu you refer to. I did look at About before; I missed the T.o.S. link.

Comment on T.o.S.: When I started reading the first screen of it, it immediately struck me as the sort of legalise one has to agree to to do anything anywhere, including getting updates of sw one has paid for. Either you sign whatever it says, even if it applies limits that might not stand up in court, or you get nothing so you can safely agree to these things if you want to do anything on a computer.

But I persisted and buried in the middle I found

Code of Conduct
By using our service you agree not to:
Cheat at any games provided by Online-Go.com
Threaten, harass, or stalk other members.
Upload, post, or otherwise make available any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, offensive, vulgar, obscene, libelous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable content on Online-Go.com or any service which utilizes Online-Go.com Widgets or Software.
Impersonate any person or entity
Disrupt the normal flow of dialog or otherwise act in a manner that negatively affects other users’ ability to communicate through or use Services provided by Online-Go.com
Intentionally or unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, noational, or international law
Solicit or advertise for any competing Go services

Under these T.o.S. I see that there is a clause(s) that would allow me to make a valid complaint. I could consider repeated profanities as harassment without knowing what they are if I ask the user to stop swearing at me and the behavior continues. Depending on what might be deduced from the context, one might be able to justify a complaint based on the grounds of “abusive, defamatory, offensive, vulgar, obscene, libelous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable”. The fact that it says “otherwise objectionable” puts considerable weight on the perceptions of the offended party.

This is my suggestion: During a chat a user might feel subjected to offensive comments, either explicit or implicit. It would be very useful to be able to direct the other party to the Code of Conduct, not the version embedded in the legal mumbo jumbo of the T.o.S.

Ideally there would be a button visible on the page named Code of Conduct or “Etiquette” It’s mere presence serves as a reminder that there is one. This is not bad because having a Profanity Filter implies that exposure to profanity is voluntary, hence profanity is tolerated and therefore there may be little constraint on or sanction for its use.

If a user feels it appropriate to call another user’s attention to a problem, it is simple to write “I don’t like the way you are speaking to me, read the Code of Conduct” or just “read OGS Etiq”.

The easier it is to remind someone to behave or else, the less likely a situation is to escalate. Having given a warning, the next move is to disengage and contact OGS Admin.

I don’t think you need to have some specific set of terms to reference in order to tell someone they’re being a jerk and report them to an admin. If they’re being a jerk, ask them to stop, if they don’t, report. Problem solved.

7 Likes

The golden rule of conduct: Don’t be a $*!%.

If one needs a code of conduct to know that, one is an idiot.
I someone is an idiot, report him/her immediately.

2 Likes

As a new user the profanity filter left me unsure what it did and what its presence meant about how seriously profanity was taken. It wasn’t until I saw a chat laced with f— that I decided to look into this.

Some might like to get involved in a direct exchange or immediately escalate. Experience has taught me there can be negative consequences both ways. Getting into an exchange can result in the one who was first offended getting sanctioned for overstepping a line and a new user might say something they don’t understand is offensive. I did that, the admin agreed and was going to deal with it as an offense, then I looked up the reference and found it probably came from literature and in context it was okay. The admin and I agreed the user might have been unaware of the difference (or existence) of the word “genteel” and had used “gentile” by mistake. That warrants approaching the user in a different spirit or just letting it go.

Referring the person to the Rules can get different responses:
Shove it. In this case escalate to admin.
Oh, sorry. In this case no need to involve anyone else.
Huh? What did I do wrong? In this case you could point out the type of error, explain, or ask an admin to have the conversation.

I’d like to be able to have a small set of measured responses available to use as seems right to me. Someone who does not want the trouble can use a heavy hammer.

NOTE: Old site documentation makes this statement about conduct:

A note about user behavior
We want everyone to have a good time while playing on OGS. We understand that Go can be competitive and frustrating sometimes, but we ask our players to exercise good sportsmanship when talking and interacting with other players.

If another player reports you for bad behavior, we might ask you to tone it down a little. In general, as long as you aren’t behaving badly, you have nothing to worry about.

There is certain behavior for which we have a zero tolerance policy and will result in an immediate ban:

Racist, misogynistic, or other hate speech
Sexually explicit material, including chat and user avatars
Direct or indirect harassment that includes threats

I am sorry, I totally do not get what you want.

Do you want a button on the already kind of cluttered page for a code of conduct? That seems totally unreasonable to me. There is too much going on allready. And for what? So you can tell people to click on it when they are being annoying? To me that seems like it would hardly solve any dispute. More likely (I think) it would serve only to agitate the disaggreament further as the other party might percieve this as being terribly condescending (boy my language is colorful today :slight_smile: ), or otherwise patronizing and weird. Are people here really being that annoying that you feel like you need this button on a regular basis?

If someone is being uncivil just tell him. If he continues, report. I find that very simple, yet effective. And strangely, I have not yet once had to resort to that.

Huh, what the hell were you talking about? :smiley: and gentile is not a bad word, is it? :smiley:

Maybe I missed the point and you are talking about something else, in that case please excuse my confusion. I however love the idea of replying to myself and am gonna use that more often :smiley:

2 Likes

Okay, go tattle to the teacher it is. If “You’re offending me, I’m gonna tell on you” is better than “You’re offending me, read the Site Etiquette guide”, okay.

Since you brought it up, yup, the interface is a bit busy, cluttered or whatever.

I think the Site Etiquette/Cod of Conduct should not be buried two menus down in the middle of several pages of stuff no one reads or needs to read to join (most people don’t read their credit card contracts) and use the site.

Re: Gentile. I did point out there were two different concepts in play: gentile and genteel. You’d have to see it in context to understand and I can’t provide either now. There’s no more wrong with gentile as there is with Jew, Gentile means not Jewish. It’s easy enough to craft a stereotypical statement that would be objectionable to whichever group’s name was plugged in. It was being used incorrectly. Giving benefit of the doubt, he incorrectly used “gentiles” for “children of the gentility”. The gentility are not non-Jews, they are people who are genteel. The statement appeared to disparage Gentiles while analysis suggested it may well have been the Gentility who were the target. What percentage of the gentility is made up of gentiles I don’t know but most gentiles are not members of the gentility.

Nah man, the first step is to ask them to stop being a jerk. That will always be more effective than “go read this etiquette guide” because one of two things are happening:

  1. The person isn’t meaning to be rude.
  2. The person is deliberately being rude.

In case 1, mentioning it will almost universally elicit a response along the lines of “Sorry, didn’t mean any offense!” However, a “please go read the etiquette” comes across as insulting, especially if the person was unaware that they had caused offense in the first place. This directly implies that you are accusing the person of being deliberately rude.

In case 2, you will likely be met with hostility or at least continued poor behavior regardless of option. You don’t need some etiquette guide to be in violation of accepted behavior on this site. OGS is not a court of law. In this instance, if you ask the person to stop being rude and they don’t, pointing out an etiquette guide won’t do a thing to curb their behavior. This isn’t some magic talisman against trolls. In this event, you either ignore them, go into zen mode, block them, or report to a moderator. How far you go with this is up to you entirely, but it’s not at all related to the profanity filter.

Since OGS is made up of people from around the world with diverse cultures, disparate languages, and varying degrees of English fluency, it’s not uncommon to encounter someone with genuinely good intentions who causes you offense. Some people are offended by too much chit-chat pre-game. Some people are offended by swear words, even used in a non-derogatory manner. Some people don’t care. This is all on a per-person basis. The profanity filter does what it states: it filters (most) profanity. It does not filter trolling - this would be an impressive feature indeed.

7 Likes

Somehow the way I arrived at your previous post gave me the impression we were having a private exchange. I didn’t want to fill up the forum. My first paragraph was intended as a brisk acknowledgement of your input and end to that subject, not to elicit an expanded lecture. I would probably not dal with an interaction like that in just two steps. But it is a good and interesting lecture to read.

The idea of pointing them at the Code was to get them to realize they might be doing something that could get them bounced if it had to be brought to attention of the site police.

(or maybe it’s a threaded fastening device).

A needle?!