Fun with the swear filter

[Geo]

What's the Star War's version? "I've got a bad feeling about this..."?

"I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

[Rusty Edge]

What's the Star War's version? "I've got a bad feeling about this..."?

"I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

   

[Valka]

Mylochka had a cute idea last week - temporarily change the way the swear filter alters forbidden terminology to something ever funnier - her first idea was for made-up cuss terms from popular SF, thus all Frack and Frell and Kark.  Nobody's ever come up with an extensive vocabulary of fake profanity in any one work, so I'd need a lot of help coming up with translations for even the handful of naughty RL terms people actually use here.  Fortunately (perhaps) this is the sort of idiotic thing the internet is good for...

I use "frack" in my offline life. Not only am I old enough to have watched and enjoyed the original Battlestar Galactica (felgercarb and all ), but the word "frack" is a RL word used when talking about the abominable practice of oil companies forcing potable water into the ground to get at reserves more cheaply than using other methods. Fracking ruins the environment, can cause earthquakes in areas that never had them before, and has rendered usable farmland totally useless. I feel so strongly about this that I cancelled my Reader's Digest subscription because they accepted advertising from Cenovus (a company that not only engages in fracking, but brags about it in TV and print ads like destroying productive farmland is a good thing).

A Canadian swear expression is "fuddle-duddle." Many years ago, then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau muttered a word in Question Period that started with "f". The microphones didn't pick it up clearly, but it was evident to the people around him what he'd said. He told the press that he'd actually said "fuddle-duddle."

If I say "cow pies" (especially in all-caps, with one or more exclamation points behind it), it should be obvious what I really mean.

The problem with designating swear words on an international forum is that a swear word/expression in one country may be a completely innocent word/expression in another. On some American forums, the lyrics to "Pack Up Your Troubles" can't be posted in their entirety; the profanity filter will be tripped. The spelling might be the same, but the meaning is completely different.

Something that happened on a gaming forum I belonged to many years ago messed up a writing competition I was running (I was a moderator there in the writing forum). We had a short story contest going, and one of the contestants had used the word "crap." Well, to me that's not such a bad word; we all know what it means, and it's not as bad as most of the alternates. But somebody among the admins decided to change the coding for that word... and put in the same code as was used for one of the forum smileys.

That smiley happened to be a spinning green skull. So the author wrote his story (not knowing about the filter change), PM'd it to me to post for him, and I discovered that one of his sentences had a spinning green skull in the middle of it. I checked the original version of the story and immediately realized it was a filtering problem. So I asked the admins to please not filter that word. The argument I used was simply that I was probably the most easily-offended member of the forum, and if a mild expletive didn't bother me, why should it bother anyone else? Not to mention it was disrespectful to the contest entrant to have written a serious story and had this ridiculous smiley in the middle of one of his sentences...

There are several common "censored" smileys available, and I made a custom one for one of my forums (an annoyed smiley sticking its tongue out, holding a sign that says *swear word*).

[Buster's Uncle]

On some American forums, the lyrics to "Pack Up Your Troubles" can't be posted in their entirety; the profanity filter will be tripped. The spelling might be the same, but the meaning is completely different.

I googled it, and this is one of those forums. alas, though pretty thoroughly international.  A slur is a slur, and we take slurs more seriously than traditional forms of cussin'. 

Should I consider spiking that one in case someone wants to use the Commonwealth form to refer to tiredness or cigarettes, and just deal with the slur manually if needed?  (I do not love putting up with anything just three letters being in the filter -they cause way too many problems when the same sequence is part of an okay word- so I could easily be talked into it...)

[Geo]

deleted


The lyrics seem innocent?

[Valka]

On some American forums, the lyrics to "Pack Up Your Troubles" can't be posted in their entirety; the profanity filter will be tripped. The spelling might be the same, but the meaning is completely different.

I googled it, and this is one of those forums. alas, though pretty thoroughly international.  A slur is a slur, and we take slurs more seriously than traditional forms of cussin'. 

Should I consider spiking that one in case someone wants to use the Commonwealth form to refer to tiredness or cigarettes, and just deal with the slur manually if needed?  (I do not love putting up with anything just three letters being in the filter -they cause way too many problems when the same sequence is part of an okay word- so I could easily be talked into it...)

It's not a big deal for me. I just used it as an example. The reverse is also true: some words that are harmless when used in Canada will result in raised eyebrows and disapproval from British people (Plotinus and I ran into that a couple of times on CFC; I'm Canadian and he's British).

@Geo: Yes, the words are innocent. The problem is that a British slang word that means "cigarette" and an American slang term that means something sexual (in a derogatory way) are spelled the same.

Since that song is from WWI not many people are familiar with it, so they miss the original context.

[Buster's Uncle]

And of course this is something that artificial intelligence is not intelligent enough about.  The word is fine; as a slur is not - the filter can't handle the difference.

[Green1]

Just out of curiosity, what is the list? How many words are we talking here?

[Buster's Uncle]

I've never counted, it is so many that I'm not interested in counting, and I estimate around 500 or more entries.  The majority is ethnic/sexual slurs and a lot of everything is attempts to anticipate workarounds.   -You know, w0rkar0unds.

[Green1]

I've never counted, it is so many that I'm not interested in counting, and I estimate around 500 or more entries.  The majority is ethnic/sexual slurs and a lot of everything is attempts to anticipate workarounds.   -You know, w0rkar0unds.

So it is like a dictionary instead of a short list. I was just wondering so as to be able to come up with creative things.

I do think we should either leave as is or go sci fi since we are a sci fi type board.

[Buster's Uncle]

It is like a slice of [heck] is what it is.  An individual field for each term. and another for each translation.  If it was lists, it would be easy.  Nothing about it is easy.  It is living through a Clive Barker novel.  It is evil that laughs at Sith for the ineffectual sweetheart posers they are.


Start posting frell and shazbot, then.

[Valka]

This is what we use on my Doctor Who forum (a most refined place where we worship Tom Baker).

[Buster's Uncle]

There HAD to be an episode where the (Baker #1!) Doctor was gagged...

[Valka]

There were a few where he was tied up (most immediate one that comes to mind is The Power of Kroll).

[Buster's Uncle]

KROLL!    KROLL!    KROLL!    KROLL!    KROLL!    KROLL!