Suggestion: Pet and Group Name Filter

[ElementalInsanity]

This is a suggestion for a group and pet name filter.

By this I mean something that would automatically make sure certain inappropriate names aren't even allowed in group names and pet names, some sort of pop up of "that name is not allowed" as some websites have.

Why I suggest this now is I've come across some pet names that were quite honestly disgusting and inappropriate for this as a kid's site, and this suggestion is something that could prevent mods having to deal with user reports. Or if these groups/pet names are never caught or reported, they sit so it could prevent that altogether.

As some people seem confused: I’m not talking about the words hell, damn, etc ones that are still ok on CS. I’m talking about some very offensive, racist, or otherwise highly disgusting words. Words that would not be found in other words.

[Bridgy1234]

Bump

[DrinaLestrange]

Major support!

[nickjr]

Oh yikes I didn't realize we didn't have a filter lol Support! The filter could probably censor the same words the forum censors if you have word censoring turned on (other than the "the the timer is all-knowing" thing in Oekaki). Even though people who are determined will always find a way to get around the filter, I figure a basic filter is better than no filter

[ElementalInsanity]

Oh yikes I didn't realize we didn't have a filter lol Support! The filter could probably censor the same words the forum censors if you have word censoring turned on (other than the "the the timer is all-knowing" thing in Oekaki). Even though people who are determined will always find a way to get around the filter, I figure a basic filter is better than no filter

I wasn’t thinking so much censoring as I have censoring turned off myself and can see any cuss words. ^^ so censoring wouldn’t exactly work for this situation. I was thinking something that literally wouldn’t allow certain names with a thing that would say ‘name not allowed’ ya know?

[obsceneSymphony]

Majorly oppose. Word filters seem straightforward but are so tricky and problematic in practice. You either have many, many times more perfectly appropriate names sensored than actually inappropriate names or you have to spend hours and hours exhaustively entering exceptions to the filter. Even then there will still be many fine names inadvertently blocked and inappropriate ones that slip through. If someone has pet or group names against CS rules, report them. It’s not a perfect system but it’s so much better than not being able to name your pet “Assassin” while others can still use extremely vulgar names just by creatively using numbers, special characters, spacing, etc. to trick the filter.

[ElementalInsanity]

Majorly oppose. Word filters seem straightforward but are so tricky and problematic in practice. You either have many, many times more perfectly appropriate names sensored than actually inappropriate names or you have to spend hours and hours exhaustively entering exceptions to the filter. Even then there will still be many fine names inadvertently blocked and inappropriate ones that slip through. If someone has pet or group names against CS rules, report them. It’s not a perfect system but it’s so much better than not being able to name your pet “Assassin” while others can still use extremely vulgar names just by creatively using numbers, special characters, spacing, etc. to trick the filter.

While I can see your point I'm not talking about the word ass. I believe that's actually an ok word even here on CS. I'm talking about some very very vulgar names that could not be allowed altogether. Words that are allowed on CS like ass, hell, and damn aren't the ones I'm worried about.
And yes, people will always use things to get around filters but it should be something implemented anyways to prevent people being able to even use it.

[Panther202]

Don't support.
I mainly don't support this because I play a game called Star Stable Online and they have a chat filter. This chat filter pretty much prevents anyone from saying anything. We have to work around it to even make one full sentence. Also, so many things can be considered vulgar or inappropriate based on your own personal beliefs. It would be nearly impossible to work with the players that find things offensive and make a filter for everything. While chat filters and name filters are pretty different, it's still essentially the same concept and could cause more harm than good.

[obsceneSymphony]

Majorly oppose. Word filters seem straightforward but are so tricky and problematic in practice. You either have many, many times more perfectly appropriate names sensored than actually inappropriate names or you have to spend hours and hours exhaustively entering exceptions to the filter. Even then there will still be many fine names inadvertently blocked and inappropriate ones that slip through. If someone has pet or group names against CS rules, report them. It’s not a perfect system but it’s so much better than not being able to name your pet “Assassin” while others can still use extremely vulgar names just by creatively using numbers, special characters, spacing, etc. to trick the filter.

While I can see your point I'm not talking about the word ass. I believe that's actually an ok word even here on CS. I'm talking about some very very vulgar names that could not be allowed altogether. Words that are allowed on CS like ass, hell, and damn aren't the ones I'm worried about.
And yes, people will always use things to get around filters but it should be something implemented anyways to prevent people being able to even use it.

The thing is that it doesn’t matter how reasonable and selective you intend the filter to be, it will still catch many perfectly fine words that contain the ones you want to filter 🤷‍♂️

[nickjr]

I have had word censoring turned on for years on CS and I haven’t seen any weird replacements in posts discussing normal things false positives (idk why it took me five minutes to remember that when I literally used it in the next sentence five minutes ago), like the shitake mushroom. Whatever implementation phpBB uses is probably fine since it’s not catching false positives like that. (I do wonder if it can be easily extended to pet and group names or if Nick would have to code something new/dig around in the existing code/etc)

The forum word filter also seems to be fairly lenient; there are some words that can be used either inappropriately or innocently with different meanings, and those words are allowed and not censored (so not including the words that can be used innocently but that refer to the exact same thing as when they’re not used innocently, which makes for a lot of censored words on one of the 18+ threads since one of those words is always used innocently there lol)