Option to disable the chatfilter and its associated pop-ups

[N_Faker]

https://en.boardgamearena.com/#!bug?id=9903

Not quite the same, but of the same issue.

[ckwatt]

Good find, N_Faker. It is definitely all part of the same issue. I guess another idea would be to have one general warning once, perhaps, just to promote civility. That should be enough.

Ironically, I think that this site is one of the least affected by insults, etc. among game sites.

[7decoeur]

I'm not sure it works either for the reasons above but also those who swear and insult other players don't seem to care and continue to do so. Then as their rep falls, they set up a new account. This has been pointed out to me a while ago, as you can detect the players who set up a new account and then fast track their ELO to Master level by playing dummy accounts by looking at their early profile track record and witnessing a game of hanabi without clues

It's a tough call, as systematically berating someone (whilst themselves are usually far from perfect) is not on. However this censorship is not really the answer. Firstly, because of the diversity of languages spoken on BGA that can be translated using the function in chat, then secondly take a look at the sheer length of the urbandictionary.com and imagine blocking all of that for every language. There are certainly worse words in UK English that pass the filter than extremely tame words like "damn".

[ckwatt]

It would be nice, at this point, to hear from the admins on this issue. Thanks, guys!

[sourisdudesert]

Hi

Thanks for your comment.

The answer is very simple: we introduced this because the majority of moderation reports are about insults, which is really stupid because everyone should know that we have a zero tolerance policy against insults here (you may be banned after 1 warning).

We need to evaluate how the number of (significative) reports has evolved since the popup. For this, we need time, because we need to know if this popup made a global long term positive evolution in BGA community behavior. If there the evolution is neutral or negative, there is no doubt we are going to remove the feature. But if there are less insult reports and these reports are more significant than before, then we will continue.

Hope this helps.

[N_Faker]

I believe you should consider a disable/opt-out option instead of keep or remove. If it is feasible.

The word filter system does serve a purpose in that it notifies anyone that encounters it of possible moderation actions should they post an offending word. Most all 'insult reports' are now of edited words that circumvent the word filter, one could reason that they have therefore encountered the word filter, so those players have effectively been warned of possible consequences to their words.

The ease of which it is possible to circumvent the word filter also makes it largely useless to anything other than a first encounter, unless they don't mind triggering the word filter.

Should you decide to keep the word filter without adding an option to disable it. I at least suggest you remove the largely benign words from the word filter list, like.

Bloody
Damn
Balls
Fool
Crap
Hell
And likely many more.

[ckwatt]

The answer is very simple: we introduced this because the majority of moderation reports are about insults, which is really stupid because everyone should know that we have a zero tolerance policy against insults here (you may be banned after 1 warning).

We need to evaluate how the number of (significative) reports has evolved since the popup. For this, we need time, because we need to know if this popup made a global long term positive evolution in BGA community behavior. If there the evolution is neutral or negative, there is no doubt we are going to remove the feature. But if there are less insult reports and these reports are more significant than before, then we will continue.

Thanks for responding. But I don't think anyone is arguing with the no-insult rule. It is more this particular method of addressing the issue - and the lack of an opt-out. Please look through the messages above to see all the various issues. Even if the number of insult reports goes down, our annoyance with the system will likely continue to go up, unless we can opt out of it.

[Orgon]

I was told off by the filter whilst posting in a game with friends only "Damn ! did not see the size of that fat green meeple!" in a game of carcassonne. I think language filter is an interesting feature, but it may be a bit too much in some case. Although I am not sure if it was Damn! or fat that were the problem. Both are common words and neither is necessary offensive in context. I think it should be up to players whether they want a profanity filter on or off. This being said there are other mechanisms (already available) to address linguistic misbehaviour.
~J