Word Censors

Do you have word censors in place on your forum(s)? If so, at what point did you draw the line and decide certain words should be censored?

I personally don't use a word filter; but if I see vulgar language used in a post I will edit (or remove) it accordingly and notify the user.

 

I don't censor anything on my own forums but I can understand why someone would I suppose. Especially if your target audience may be a bit younger than usual.

 

Yeah, I used and use word filters on the harsher words. I did however spot a funny entry on IPS's company forums of someone using the word "Duck" for bad words and spam keywords. It leaves a funny message that your users will get a kick out of.

I could try finding the link if you guys would like to see it.

 

I don't use word filters, but I do manually censor any words I may find inappropriate. Considering RCT3 and related games are played by people of all ages, I think it's important to maintain a "family friendly" atmosphere.

 

I have lots of words on the 'naughty' list on my site. Being a Disney site, I have lots of parents surfin' the site with their youngsters. So, I can't rely on catching all of the words out there if/when they are used. Most of my folks are pretty good though so I hardly have any issues at all.

 

I've used word filters off and on, but I tailor it to the maturity level of your forum population. I find that most people are mature, some spew vulgarities all the time, and a small handful are easily offended by just about anything. I know on the Bungie.net forums, their word filter automatically replaces censored words with -blam- so I had thought about being clever and looking into something similar to avoid the stars*.

 

I am just curious as to why some of you don't use word filters but say you will manually edit the word.

 

For me, it really depends on how the word is being used - hence the manual edit rather than something done automatically.

 

Exactly. I think it looks tacky to have something replaced with "****" or some other word like, "Hey John: naughtyword you!". If I saw something like that, I'd delete the whole post rather than leave the censor in there anyways.

 

Exactly - it looks out of place and ugly. Not very appealing when it comes to possible "new" members looking around.

 

What about a smiley graphic?

 

That's an interesting idea, but like a text-based censor, it still has the possibility of looking out of place.

 

Yeah, the out-of-place issue is one that really can't be avoided.

 

I suppose, but a word is a word. If you know you don't want something like "dog" (example) on your forum, why not censor it... even to "d**" or something (if vBulletin can do it that way)?

 

I guess it really depends on how you want to do it - different strokes.

 

It can, I've usually found text to be annoying. I find graphics are better, but of course there's always that one rotten apple who gets carried away when they're pissed on a forum. Usually people will exercise caution regarding that and not become a swearing sailor.

 

For me it depends on what forum I have if its an serious forum with mature level then i don't censor any words unless i have some good reason after a word have been used first.
On other site wich is more fun sites :p then i can censor words but don't do that until someone have used the bad word first.

 

I have wordfilters turned on for registrations and the chat room, but not for posting. My members know they're not supposed to use bad words, and rarely try to test the rules. As one of my mods explained to a troll, "the Delete key is your filter".

 

in our forum its only the f word and c word we cant use, which are replaced by ****

when we first did it a slight mistake was made which meant the word "cant" was censored and the naughty word wasnt.

at first we had no swear word filter but the members language got a bit rude, and the other admin really didnt like the use of so much bad language.

the other ones have always had swear word filters cause most of the members are under 18, but on the other one we only allow 16+ members to sign up