Moderating content

How to keep pedophiles (or pedo bear) out?

[garyr_h]

Recently I received an email from the AdSense team about content on one of the user generated pages. It said I had 72 hours to remove it because it violated child safety rules otherwise AdSense would be disabled on that domain.

I removed it promptly and set up some more safe-guards in PHP and added some things to robots.txt. However, I think that's only moderating the problem.

How do I stop users from writing such content in the future?

Most of that stuff is meant as a joke, it's even posted in the humor section. However, I don't find it very funny and neither does Google. Users can already tell me whether or not a page is against the rules and I have filters set up in PHP to strip out profanity and other bad words. And if I ever see anything, I delete it, obviously.

Nonetheless, I can't think of any way to moderate phrases, especially ones which use a lot of slang words.

Any ideas?

[jimbeetle]

In a case like this it seems like the only thing you can do is to actually moderate it and don't let anything go live until somebody okays it.

[martinibuster]

The joke section probably doesn't make you any money anyway, it's a community building thing. So you have a greater range of options. Here are some suggestions.

1. Remove the ads off that section.

2. Block crawlers from the humor area

3. Block newly registered users from posting in that area until their post count elevates them to regular member status.

4. Activate a Report-A-Post function. Make the button highly visible.

5. Recruit a moderator or two to keep watch over that forum.

6. Suspend longtime or active members who violate the rules. It's not about freedom of speech. It's about the community and/or your livelihood.

7. Any longtime or active members who continue with that behavior after they were properly warned and counseled are rude and don't care about you or your community. Ban them. Don't look back.

[rogerd]

Great advice from martinibuster. I doubt if the humor section is generating much ad revenue or inbound traffic, so keeping Adsense ads and search spiders away would be a great start.

[thecoalman]

Nonetheless, I can't think of any way to moderate phrases, especially ones which use a lot of slang words.

Trying filter words is problematic let alone phrases. I've run into numerous filters that were filtering legitimate words. A "petcock" is a plumbing part and if you're filtering by wildcard that gets censored, I've had to learn to use the word levee when discussing the river dike near my town.

edit: they weren't filtered here as they shouldn't be...

I have strict policy that anything posted in the public forums has to be family friendly. I have a private forum that members can join through the control panel with substantially lower set of rules. There is a warning about explicit material. No #*$! and no copyrighted stuff, beyond that it's no holds barred for the most part.

[lucy24]

I've had to learn to use the word levee when discussing the river dike near my town.

edit: they weren't filtered here as they shouldn't be...

Possibly the makers of this site's word censors know that i != y. But writing about a bleeding injury requires careful wording-- as does a common element in Thai names, see previous post-- though female dogs appear to be OK. Doesn't everyone have a good Word Filters story?

[engine]

Great advice from Martinibuster.

If the terms of agreement between you and your member prohibits it, then the member should not fear being censored. Tough love!

You might also consider making that particular section pre-moderated. In other words, all posts are on hold until you, or a moderator approves it. Useful if it's a constant problem.

[thecoalman]

Possibly the makers of this site's word censors know that i != y.

That is what I thought but apparently it can be spelled either way for both meanings.