Board Thread:Wiki Running/@comment-3225604-20150119093006/@comment-3225604-20150121132822

Imamadmad wrote: Here's an idea for swearing elsewhere (I'm not sure if it could be made to use with chat). An abuse filter could be configured to prevent users from submitting any piece of text containing a swearword, and if a person repeatedly tries to swear (say, 5 times or more), they get blocked automatically with no admin intervention required. Sound interesting?

There are a few concerns about this item. First, I'm afraid this filter might affect the innocent. This resembles to a case that I remember not long ago about the chat room misunderstanding. A user with a name called "Dick" came to the chat and got blocked instantly. I'm afraid if we have any user who is called "Dick" since this name is common (included in Oxford Dictionary name list) and the short form of Dickson. By calling his name, I'm afraid we will get blocked and need to use another name to call him, which will be super inconvenient.

Moreover, this function is a bit useless since we have been having a really strong admin team here. The profanity is reverted or deleted almost some seconds after, extreme case would require a few minutes. I think it adds more trouble on how the user swears, whether it is offensive or harmless. This matters since it involves more complication. This can also mean different block period. On the other hand, users may evade swearing by censoring with asterisks. This can be used as a counterpart to offend others, which makes the filter a bit useless as well.

Finally, I think this function is once enabled in Wild Ones Wiki and there are some errors and glitches. It does not really inhibit any swear words but sometimes inhibit some terms like "Facebook hack" or something like that. I might question the effectiveness of this filter since similar one has been enabled in Wild Ones Wiki but does not have any changes. Though this function can stop users from creating spam pages, this function might not be able to stop comments as you have mentioned that it may not work on chat. Therefore, I have some reservations on enabling this function, especially when it may cause inconvenience to users here. In short, I think manual blocking is a bit more safer and the emoticon idea is more harmless than abuse filter.