Obscenity Filter

Right. Well I've just witnessed a rather lengthy discussion in the Welcome Area on the topic of swearing and bannings. It seems to me that this is almost a waste of the lindens time to have to intervene on such a tiny offense.

Here is my suggestion to Linden Labs:

Implement an obscenity filter on the Client side. Since it is activated on the client side, it will not only free up the servers from having to parse each individual chat message for potential swear words, but also filter out any "accidents". We are, after all, only human, and humans are prone to making the occasional "slip up". Having the lindens appear to ban people for a short period on these occasions is perhaps a waste of their time. Griefers will also not be allowed the satisfaction of having people banned from PG sims because of their, quite frankly, hilarious antics. (One could argue that it is best to call in a linden when this happens instead of becoming frustrated and letting a few words loose).

The lindens will of course still have to make the odd appearence in the situations when people are generally abusing the filter by sticking symbols or spaces inbetween words, in the hopes that they appear on everyones screen in full colour.

Anyhow. What do YOU think?

Edit: Ah yes, I didn't mention anywhere in the text that I think it should be possible to enable/disable the said filter should the user wish. Sorry, that was actually one of my original intentions, and I thought I had done so.

Well land is seperated. Pg and mature you cannot swear in pg.

Well. Actually you CAN swear in a PG sim.

My point is that mistakes happen, and suffering from a 3 day or whatever banning because you accidentally let slip in the presence of some *cough* retentive person is perhaps a little harsh, and an absolute waste of the lindens time. There are some people in world who do seem to, let's say, go out of their way to kick up a fuss over the tiniest offense, even after an apology, when the surrounding people are generally uneffected by it. People such as these might welcome (I wonder) the idea of being able to cut down the amount of punishment to their own, or their.. childrens.. eyeballs.

And so you know, I do agree that people should get punished for lewd and antisocial behavior in PG sims.

Sadly, griefers are stupid. They'd use the same tricks to get around them as is used in every other online game with that sort of censorship. They'd simply type their word with spaces or punctuation inside it, spell it with similar sounding letters, etc.

I think that people who are deeply offended by "profanity" are amusing. I think that prohibiting the use of profanity by adults in the company of adults is even funnier. I don't use profanity all that much myself and don't really care when others do.

Profanity filters that are adept enough to catch cases like "a$$h0l3" are ponderous, subject to false positives, and ultimately don't protect the tender sensibilities of those who feel they need them.

I'd rather have an inventory system that didn't make objects in my inventory - that I created - owned by Random Linden and unmodifiable than a profanity filter, but that's just me.

Id rather not waste the cpu cycles, besides its not like your talking and it slips.
You had to type out the whole word, ect. Maybe people should just make an effort, lol.

Ah yes. I realise this. I did state that these are situations where a linden should perhaps be called in, as they are blatantly trying to avoid the filters that people might have put in place. Perhaps I was a little unclear on that point. It happens, I'm not particularly good at putting my thoughts into written word.

So far I have heard of two separate incidents where people were in PG sims and were being harassed by griefers, then banned because the griefer reported them for swearing. This wouldn't need to be the case, as it holds that if the griefer is offended by such language, they should not have disabled the filter in the first place. At least I think it does.



Hey now.. what are you doing on SecondLife in the first place . Seriously though, it should be something that you can disable. If you feel you'd rather put 0.1% CPU extra into processing a MP3 or OGG stream, or looping through some dance animations, you should have that choice.

Durn straight! I want my 0.1% cpu usage! I got low enough fps as it is, lol.
(I relize it would be running the time, just when I talk, but still.. im picky)

I'm not so much offended by profanity as the context. Sometimes a deeply-wounding expression can constitute whole pages of blathering text with nary a 4-letter word in sight.

It is silly to even care about profanity. It merely serves to demonstrate how much you lack an ability to abstract yourself from the banal happenings of your every day life.
I dont care how vernacular you get around me. Words have no inherent meaning, they mean only what we want them to mean.
I hate censorship but in this case I think it is more logical to allow people to automatically censor the text they receive. By default it would trust the sim rating, but overly sensitive people should be able to make it censor everything you receive regardless of sim rating, and those of us who are sane should be able to see everything as it was typed.
It should NEVER be implemented on the SERVER side, though! Scripts sending random binary data to each other could have it corrupted by the profanity filter.

LOL... I used to say this a lot.

The only word that I still flinch at, unwaveringly, is the anatomy-referencing 4-letter "C" word... it can stop trains around this part of the world.

Everything else has lost its luster.

I vote no for the profanity filter, because we're all adults here... right? Ahem.

LF

lol wanna bet?!

As for filters... make it a client side thing please... with uploadable customizable ini file or something!

I think this is a great idea. I'm all for giving people technological options to solve personal choice issues.

Some people may want to go to M sims for the mature nature, but still not want all the vulgar language.

I would ask that the language filter have a couple settings, I suggest:
- level 0 - no filtering
- level 1 - the big curse words (you know what they are)
- level 2 - level 1 + sexually explicit language (slang, not proper scientific names)

This could be made as a cleint-side option so there's no lag on the servers, and it would likely be very easy to implement.

<sarcasm>I think you should go fuck yourself</sarcasm>

Honestly, I think an obscenity filter is both a waste of time and an insult to the players. There is no shortage of ways to get around an obscenity filter -- the only filter I've seen that worked was one that had a list of words people were allowed to use. Further, we're all supposedly adults here. We don't need mommy and daddy Linden to tell us what sort of words we're allowed to hear.

You're absolutely right.

That's why it would be a voluntary feature.

*gives you eyeglasses to re-read the thread*

Eggy,

<< and those of us who are sane should be able to see everything as it was typed. >>

Thanks for giving me a laugh first thing in the morning!

Personally, I think it would be a waste of the limited resources we have with Linden programming time. There are many other major issues that should be dealt with first. Besides, they're just words and we are all adults, are we not?

Those folks at the welcome area were in violation of TOS if they were swearing.. file an abuse report.

Additionally, *IF* it were to make it in the product, you should have to OPT-IN for filtering.

Moose, this is why I say again, any time you decide to have sex with a guy, call me. I'm in love with you.

Screw all of you you southern baptist bitches. As I've stated previously, I find even the idea of a PG/Mature division in a GAME DESIGNED SOLELY FOR THOSE OVER THE LEGAL AGE OF CONSENT IN THE US AND CANADA defying of all of my logic.

If you DON'T want to suffer the damage wrought upon you by hearing me say fuck, ignore it. It's @(&#@(&$(!&!@ to me. If only we could get the additions made to the game at the same rate people are banned because SoAndSoWhinyForty-ThreeMotherOfPreciousJosephine Donaldson complained to LL, then they might have things to occupy themselves with.

Lord allmighty.

Bravo!! Much applause from me, and thanks for giving me a good laugh at the end of a hard day. I agree totally.... I'm all for ending these ridiculous divisions. Make all the sims mature, zone 'em for residential and commercial if you want to keep the clubs out of some... I'm not a child, I shouldn't have to be oh-so-careful about my language for fear of offending someone. If people are that easily offended by profanity, they probably shouldn't be in SL in the first place.

And for that matter, I should be allowed to have adult content in my own home, on my own land, in a closed room, without constantly worrying that somebody's going to snoop around and see it and freak out. I live in a really pretty and peaceful sim that happens to be PG, I don't want to move anytime soon, but it bugs me that I have to be so careful about what I put in *my home* on *my own land* in a game that's supposedly populated by adults. I say, if they're offended, they're free to go elsewhere.

I dont think an obscenity filter is needed at all -- after all, it's not like there are any minors in SL.. If you're that easily insulted, you should become more hardy!

Glad I could help. ;D

And yeah, for the longest time I didn't even realize I had land in a PG sim until someone complained about the BEAUTIFUL painting I had on a wall of an angel holding a sword, who just happened to be in some, erm, modest clothing.

Insane.

Whose anatomy, Lordfly? Can I say it? Can I? Can I?

Would be nice if there were no rudeness of any sort, including this one, but alas--

Better to ignore the whole lot. But I wonder, why do people feel the need to be rude to people?

If you're cursing up a storm intentionally to insult or make someone uncomfortable, then that's one thing. If someone's expressed to me, in a mature, reasonable manner that they'd prefer it if I refrained from cursing around them, not, "EXCUSE me, I am OFFENDED by your language, cease immediately!" than I've no problem toning it down.

however in normal language I don't think saying "goddamnit" instead of "this is frustrating me" is rude. the unfortunate fact of the matter that many, many people refuse to admit is curse words ARE a part of the english, chinese, spanish, arabian, russian, hebrew, etc etc etc languages. sure I can wax poetically about how oft the second life lag doth make me constipated to a fit, but I think it was kurt vonnegut who said that sometimes it's just better to say fuck.

as long as your language isn't chosen to specifically insult (and in some cases this doesn't apply. ) then it shouldn't matter what your word choice is. remember it's possible to be far more offensive using fifteen words instead of one "evil" word.