Autocensor

[The_J]

No, it doesn't.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I always just say s***. Can I still do that?

A question that will shortly answer itself.

Edit: in the affirmative.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

No, it doesn't.

I find that interesting, that a 20-year-old forum host had a better, more flexible, more useful autocensor than this new modern one.

 

[Gori the Grey]

One problem is that the substitute word doesn't have the same syllable-count.

There's a new autocensor and it . .
Let's just say that it's not been a hit
With the CFC crowd.
The complaining's been loud.
People think it's a pile of horsehockey.

See. It ruins the meter.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This is why the word "crap" is useful, though on the first gaming forum I belonged to, I had to ask that it be removed from the autocensor.

I was running Iron Pen on that forum (this was about 19 years ago), and someone submitted a story that had a spinning green skull smiley in the middle of a sentence. I knew that this was the substitute the admins used for words that were censored, and figured uh-uh, I was not going to post that story with the skull in it, because it would mean an unfair advantage for the other person. I PM'd the writer and asked what word he'd originally used, he said "crap", so I figured that's not such a bad word.

The way I explained it to the admins was this: As synonyms for feces go, "crap" is pretty mild. And since I had a reputation for being one of the most easily-offended people on that forum (at that time; a lot has changed in 20 years), if the word didn't offend me, I doubted it would offend anyone else. Could they please remove it so I could post both the Iron Pen stories and stay on schedule?

They agreed with me and removed it. The story was posted with the word "crap" in it, and the contest proceeded as normal.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to quote Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and have Kirk say, "No, ma'am. No dipcrap."

And here's another thing: Rules have been relaxed when it comes to posting YT videos with swearing, and also some images. Yes, we're told to tag them as NSFW, which is reasonable. I'm detecting some inconsistency here.

 

[Gori the Grey]

It seems needless. At least at first blush, it
Seems prissy the censor should hush it.
Does it matter the word?
Feces, crap, doo-doo, turd.
The stuff's brown and it stinks and we flush it.

 

[Quintillus]

One problem is that the substitute word doesn't have the same syllable-count.

There's a new autocensor and it . .
Let's just say that it's not been a hit
With the CFC crowd.
The complaining's been loud.
People think it's a pile of horsehockey.

See. It ruins the meter.

Not necessarily.

There's a new autocensor and the rollout's been rocky
It's been replacing words with jabberwocky
With the CFC crowd.
The complaining's been loud.
People think it's a pile of horsehockey.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I honestly thought this was just a new "yikes"-style trend of everyone adopting a new stupid buzzword. Now I realise that it's just a bunch of people incapable of stopping themselves from swearing, which is somehow even worse.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's also catching people who are not using that string of letters as intentionally hostile swearing. I still have a hard time believing that the XenForo autocensor is that inflexible.

 

[Broken_Erika]

WTH?
W-T-F
Did someone add this to the autocensor? Or did it update with forum software?
Just curious.

 

[leif erikson]

Looking into it.
It is there, but do not recall it being added?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

We haven't been allowed to use the acronym for Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot for quite some time now. It turns into whatever Whiskey-Tango-(whatever word is used for "H").

My take on it: I get that there are certain words that we shouldn't say on a family-friendly forum. There are several of them that are ALWAYS censored on whatever forums I've run over the past 20 years.

But this is getting ridiculous. Don't tell me that the average 13-year-old is going to be corrupted by the acronym for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

And it's annoying to have my posts autocensored to include a concept I don't even believe in ("hell").

 

[Arakhor]

I don't believe in hell either, but I also don't believe that my occasionally saying "Christ almighty" or even "good God" when I'm surprised relies on having a Christian upbringing.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Not the point.

 

[Arwon]

Y'all really need to do something about the over active censor not coping with text strings being part of longer words.

I was getting blocked from talking about fire retárdant in a bushfire context for christs sake. That's not a fit for purpose tool. It is 2025, you surely can't still be struggling with the Sċunthorpe problem.

 

[The_J]

We can do absolutely 0 about that, the forum software is indeed not smarter than this.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Y'all really need to do something about the over active censor not coping with text strings being part of longer words.

I was getting blocked from talking about fire retárdant in a bushfire context for christs sake. That's not a fit for purpose tool. It is 2025, you surely can't still be struggling with the Sċunthorpe problem.

Yep. I repeat: I find it very hard to believe that XenForo's autocensor is less flexible and customizable than InvisionFree's was over 20 years ago, when I admin'd a couple of gaming forums, a Dune forum, and a Doctor Who forum and I'm the one who made the decisions about what would and would not be part of the autocensor.

It became an issue when 1. We couldn't discuss Christmas music because the name of a song triggered the autocensor due to a particular combination of letters; and 2. I had to deal with an individual on the Dune forum for reasons that were personal to her and she had a problem with the male staff - they wanted to permaban her and I opted to talk to her and find out exactly what the problem was. When I did find out, I set the autocensor so she could still post and it wouldn't cause my male colleagues to be upset. I fixed the gaming forum's autocensor so the Christmas song could be talked about.

Invision forums let you specify whether it's a specific string of letters alone, or if it's also part of a longer string of letters. The admins have the choice of how to set this.

In the case of XenForo, I wonder. There must be a way to use normal words in non-objectionable contexts. Kinda like pussy willows and chinks in armor and log cabins. The examples in my last sentence used to be censored, and I asked for a review of the censored words. I see that they came through just fine, so it's the staff's responsibility to evaluate the use of these words to see if they're used in a normal context or as sexist/racist terms.

The "r-word" is used likewise, in so many non-pejorative contexts like music, discussing automotives (even I know that and I've never driven in my life).

Every time I see "horsehockey" on the forum, this is the sort of thing that comes to mind:

It doesn't conjure a feeling of "Oh, thank you, CFC mods, for saving us from inappropriate language." It does conjure a feeling of "Come on, context matters, and we're not children. Don't treat us that way."

Does it make more work sometimes? Yeah. But that's what you all signed up for. I issued my own share of inappropriate language infractions years ago, and some of them were justified due to the context and others... well, I felt stupid having to issue the point or whatever, but the rules were the rules. It doesn't mean that the particular rule back then was a good rule, because it didn't make people suddenly improve their innate desire to use more acceptable vocabulary. And keep in mind that the rule in this case is catching people who are NOT swearing or being sexist or racist.

Note that there are some words I feel will always be unacceptable, due to definition or intent. But when a word is part of a larger word or it has a completely innocuous other meaning that is what the poster really means... come on, guys.

EDIT: @The_J, are there others complaining about this on the XenForo support forum? Is there a way to mention that it's a problem and ask them to find a workaround?

 

[The_J]

Yep. I repeat: I find it very hard to believe that XenForo's autocensor is less flexible and customizable than InvisionFree's was over 20 years ago

Try it yourself.
You can find the free demo under https://xenforo.com/demo/?e=A . Give it an email, log into the forum with the credentials "admin" and "admin", and go to the admin panel on top. You can find the autocensor under "setup", "options", "censoring".

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I may do that, even if only to satisfy my curiosity at getting to see the guts of a different type of forum. I've dealt with several others over the years, and am most familiar with Invision, though when I was on staff at a gaming forum that used vBulletin, the admins there encouraged all of us to read the manual and do our best to understand it. Same with the admin on the Dune forum I ended up running. He told all of us to join the support forum, read the documentation, participate in the support forum, and learn.

I was the only one who took him seriously, as the others didn't bother. So when the forum owner had to move on (for school), I'm the one he promoted.

Gotta admit, that InvisionFree support forum could be a wild place at times. I remember when our server went down - and stayed down. It took ages for them to get it fixed, and there were a lot of admins and mods there, all trying to find out the latest news. I remember one day, somebody asked, "When you fix it, could you rename it Server 12.5? Server 13 turned out to be really unlucky..."

Is there a time limit to try this?

 

[Patine]

I may do that, even if only to satisfy my curiosity at getting to see the guts of a different type of forum. I've dealt with several others over the years, and am most familiar with Invision, though when I was on staff at a gaming forum that used vBulletin, the admins there encouraged all of us to read the manual and do our best to understand it. Same with the admin on the Dune forum I ended up running. He told all of us to join the support forum, read the documentation, participate in the support forum, and learn.

I was the only one who took him seriously, as the others didn't bother. So when the forum owner had to move on (for school), I'm the one he promoted.

Gotta admit, that InvisionFree support forum could be a wild place at times. I remember when our server went down - and stayed down. It took ages for them to get it fixed, and there were a lot of admins and mods there, all trying to find out the latest news. I remember one day, somebody asked, "When you fix it, could you rename it Server 12.5? Server 13 turned out to be really unlucky..."

Is there a time limit to try this?

If you decide to turn your demo into your own forum, let me know.