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Forum Moderators: rogerd
I wouldn't go down that route -- in my experience, users will mercilessly rip the piss out of such a filter, and spend some time finding amusing ways to make it mangle quite innocuous words. Sensible forum moderation works much better.
great fun.
[edited by: rogerd at 6:53 pm (utc) on Nov. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] let's keep things in good taste... [/edit]
Can people spell around it? Sure... but there's no way that member can argue that he/she didn't know that the word wasn't allowed when you turn off posting.
On a really busy forum, mods can't read every single post in a timely manner, so a filter helps a lot. In addition, when a new member finds that words have been bleeped out he/she has immediate, automated feedback about the language expectations of your forum.
Searching for something like "swear filter word list" will give you some hits. In the early days, you'll probably have to add to a generic list to catch the spellings your members use.
There's excellent moderation here, which means that members rarely see bad behavior of any kind. Filtering alone won't do it - some people will always assume that the rules don't apply to them, and will spell around it. I'd guess 80 - 90% of new arrivals will get the message, though. I.e., they post something, see it filtered, and then either leave it as is or go back and edit out the content that tripped the filter.
When we reject the entry we don't say which words are reject just a vague, your wording seems harsh, please reconsider so it's not so obvious how to game the farking thing.
I agree that it's mostly useless to hope to try and block a person intent on being vulgar but the filter will at least block usage of someone who many be using one of the words casually without meaning to be vulgar. It also lets them know that their desire is in conflict with the forum's so it's a tip off to them that they are not going to be received well if they keep it up.
So we keep it in there.
[edited by: rogerd at 2:31 am (utc) on Nov. 23, 2005]
[edit reason] let's not spell around the filter... :) [/edit]
That's a very intersting point, nathanso. Some forum owners may find that desirable, while others may feel that if the membership is "thinking" the word when they read the message that the post has crossed the boundary. A relatively free-wheeling forum might find the partial blockage approach a good one, since members can still "swear" but they won't load the pages with offensive content.
I've found that about half of the instances where someone uses words caught by the filter the expletives are directed at another member. That's probably environment-specific, though.