Muddy funsters

not to have my language pithily deconstructed by some one who loves a bit of finger waggling

That Cougar loves a good finger waggle.

I’m told.

This thread needs a song.

[video]https://youtu.be/Bqxnm6t3QMw[/video]
(Contains bikes, so sort of relevant for this parish.)

He’s gonna wake up in a smoothie

If i have caused offence I wholeheartedly apologise
Fixed that for you.

“finger wagging”

exhibit A.

🙄

retro83 – Member

I can tell you’re from Liverpool

this enforcement seems draconian, flawed and a complete lottery.

To an extent, it is a lottery. We’re a team of individuals and there are no hard and fast “if x then y” rules. What I might moderate one way someone else might not, and vice versa. I’ll hold my hand up that it’s inconsistent, and some people interpret this as bias, but it’s simply a case of whoever picks something up first deals with it however they believe is correct.

FWIW, I rarely moderate language as it feels somewhat hypocritical of me, I’ll usually just quietly edit a post if the filter’s missed something (it’s a bit of a blunt object) and only issue a warning if someone appears to be deliberately circumventing it. Getting a warning for self-censoring shouldn’t happen (I’m not saying it doesn’t, but it shouldn’t). The general rule of thumb as others have said is just to let the filter do its job, though portmanteau swearing is problematic.

I’ve just reviewed your history Nick, as that does sound draconian. You’ve received three “swear filter avoidance” warnings since June, the third one at the end of October stating “Next time will result in some time off from the Forum.” That will be why the ban was issued.

I’d concur that a week may have been harsh, I’d probably have given 48 hours if it were me.

No evidence was supplied of my errors.

Sorry, but that’s not true. The emails provide both a link to the offending post and in three out of four of them also contained a copy of the post in the body of the email. How much evidence do you need?

**** loads!

In the interest of transparency, can we get a league table of who hits the ‘Report’ button the most?

the filter replaces any filtered swear with four stars, regardless of the size or shape of the word its filtering.

Not quite. The filter is basically a search and replace, it swaps $swearword with whatever text has been entered against that word to replace it. It replaces -ing with four asterisks because that’s what happens to be entered against that particular word. There’s no practical reason why it can’t be *******, or ****ing, or Christopher Biggins.

EDIT: Actually, I’ve just checked back, and I’m wrong.

The filter will search and replace as I described. If no alternative is entered, it will default to four asterisks.

Close, but doesn’t look outraged enough

I take it the “pre-filtering” that’s at the heart of this is the use of letter substitution rather than typing asterisks? I.e. ‘@’ in place of ‘a’ or ‘1’ in place of ‘i’.

I like the Bearbones swear filter, things like: “Rapha” gets changed to “Expensive hipster brand”. Much more adult 😆

In the interest of transparency, can we get a league table of who his the ‘Report’ button the most?

No. Even if we wanted to share that information, it’s not something I can easily calculate.

I could make a fairly good guess as to who the prime candidates might be, mind. (-:

So is it, or is it not, okay to replace a swear with asterisks yourself?

Because if it isn’t then that seems a very bizarre rule that punishes people who are trying to do the right thing, while rewarding people who just swear away and may not even be aware that the filter caught it.

I like the Bearbones swear filter, things like: “Rapha” gets changed to “Expensive hipster brand”. Much more adult

Oh, there are a few Easter eggs in ours too (as a couple of posters on the previous page have demonstrated).

Big brother watches us. 😯
We need to go moar like Mumsnet 😀
In fairness the Mods here get a fair bit of grief, maybe the rules need looking at? How about warnings/3 strikes before an outright ban ( which seemed a tad harsh this time round) (justsayinglike)

Wear your banhammer scars with pride I say.It’s the reason why the bighitters are all so horribly malformed (I think).

Oh, there are a few Easter eggs in ours too (as a couple of posters on the previous page have demonstrated).

No, i really do struggle with long sentences.

Judging by the recent picture of TJ you may be on to something there
😆
(Sorry TJ)

How about warnings/3 strikes before an outright ban

It’s broadly what we do (and the OP had four in this case), though it can be useful to have some wiggle room. Sometimes hard-and-fast rules aren’t appropriate. Do we deal with someone who’s had three “strikes” in the last month in the same way as someone with three in the last year, or over the space of the last five years? How about someone who launches into a massive tirade vs someone who makes a simple slip and who we know is having Real Life difficulties? Black & white moderation (in so far as that’s even possible) has its advantages, but also its disadvantages. It’s always going to be subjective to some degree.

I got warnings for this at first, before I realised what I was doing wrong.

It’s replacing letters with things that look like letters so the filter doesn’t star it out, e.g. you $illy s0d.

You’ve received three “swear filter avoidance” warnings since June, the third one at the end of October stating “Next time will result in some time off from the Forum.” That will be why the ban was issued.

yet:

Getting a warning for self-censoring shouldn’t happen

hmmm.

Anyway, Cougar thank you for the response, it sheds light on the issue i had. I hope you can see where i was coming from regarding the inconsistencies in how your filtering works.

The fact that ‘****’ is preferable to display to forum users as opposed to ‘s*ear f*lter a*oidance’ (for instance) is still puzzling to me but there you go. I hope it proves useful if and when this is reviwed.

FWIW, I only have recieved two emails from Singletrack moderators over the last year. Having looked at my inboxes again, they all went into ‘junk’ as a suspected mailing list email(s) and I think previous emails were auto deleted as i never saw them in time.

When i reference ‘no evidence’ I should clarify, that it was not made clear to me what swear filter avoidance was. I was told i had avoided a swear filter in posts that contained (or were surrounded by) other swear words in plain sight as i understood it. I emailed for a response on the day of the ban highlighting the apparent hypocrisy and my confusion here, but did not receive an answer. I want to use this forum but this has been poorly handled and been confusing- as above comments reflect.

I should clarify, that it was not made clear to me what swear filter avoidance was.

Ah, fair point. There’s a bit more info on the T&Cs page.

“There is a swear filter on the site that will capture what we consider to be the most offensive vocabulary but any attempt to evade this swear filter will result in that post or thread being deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned. Our swear filter is not exhaustive and the moderators reserve the right to moderate any language regardless of its inclusion or otherwise in the swear filter library.”

I’ll see if I can help – if you type swe@r it’s still really obvious what you mean and that level of “self censorship” isn’t really self censorship at all, pretty much all it accomplishes is to defeat the filter. **** on the other hand, well I’m sure people can imagine what you mean, but any more sensitive souls will just imagine it’s “dang” rather than anything more fruity.

Having looked at my inboxes again, they all went into ‘junk’ as a suspected mailing list email(s)

Yeah. This is another reason why we sometimes have to issue temporary bans. If people aren’t receiving emails, it’s the only other way we have of getting their attention. We can at our discretion reactivate the account if there are mitigating circumstances.

In the interest of transparency, can we get a league table of who hits the ‘Report’ button the most?

A bedwetter’s league table would be interesting.
Don’t think I’d feature on it, I think I’ve only ever reported one or two people for being complete ****, and one chap who accidentally pasted a link with his full real name it (It was the location on his PC, and not the first person who has revealed they keep a folder of links for the specific purpose of arguing on STW). 🙄 😆

I’d like fruitier language to be allowed, but contrary to the OP’s claims the mods have always made it clear which language has been unacceptable.

perchypanther – Member
No, i really do struggle with long sentences

If you can’t do the time…….
🙂

Pretty much that aracer, changing one letter does not make a real difference opposed to **** which makes it a lot **** harder.

Ah, fair point. There’s a bit more info on the T&Cs page.

“There is a swear filter on the site that will capture what we consider to be the most offensive vocabulary but any attempt to evade this swear filter will result in that post or thread being deleted. Repeat offenders will be banned. Our swear filter is not exhaustive and the moderators reserve the right to moderate any language regardless of its inclusion or otherwise in the swear filter library.”

Indeed. As it happened, I had plenty time to retrospectively read this and other gems within the T&C’s over the 7 day ban. I hold my hand up to not reading the T&C’s of the site after creating my account whenever that was, and took my lead from the generally adult tone of the discussions i have read over many hours on STW- that contain swearing on a regular basis.

If I may, I would politely suggest coalescing your approach to this issue. By your own admission it is all over the map and you struggle with limited resources running the site which has my sympathy. Warning emails which were innocently filtered in my case were missed and auto deleted, a PM via the site would have been immediately visible for instance (I don’t know if this is possible), and a shorter term ban would have made more sense. I want to be constructive here, as it seems others above share my confusion.

If people aren’t receiving emails, it’s the only other way we have of getting their attention.

If only there was a PM function on this site… 😉

I’ll see if I can help – if you type swe@r it’s still really obvious what you mean and that level of “self censorship” isn’t really self censorship at all

I honestly don’t know the reasoning behind it, but I’d bet my bike that you’re right. Because, how exactly do you even begin define an appropriate level of acceptable obfuscation? S**** is fine, swe@r isn’t, what about swaer or sw*ar? It’s impossible. The only practical way to police it is to say “don’t do it.”

The whole thing is a pain in the arse if I’m honest. I think it’s madness that a jumble of letters can cause offence (and I’m inclined to defer to Steve Hughes here), but I can understand why it’s necessary to restrict it. Look at mumsnet.

but contrary to the OP’s claims the mods have always made it clear which language has been unacceptable.

have they? can you link me to this list? I’d be keen to see it.

PM’s aren’t immediately visible they are tucked a way on you profile page, you do get an email to inform you have one though. 😀

Rorschach – Member

Wear your banhammer scars with pride I say.It’s the reason why the bighitters are all so horribly malformed (I think).

monkeysfeet – Member

Judging by the recent picture of TJ you may be on to something there

(Sorry TJ)

🙂

If only there was a PM function on this site…

… which emails you. 🙄

The PM function needs work to be more visible on the site really. Hopefully that should change soon.

have they? can you link me to this list? I’d be keen to see it.

Sure, it’s:

****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
****
Richard Stilgoe

The PM function needs work to be more visible on the site really. Hopefully that should change soon.

That was in the Preview version of the forum that was available temporarily a couple of weeks ago. Did you not get the email?

PM’s aren’t immediately visible they are tucked a way on you profile page

Yeah, UI fail there I think. Should be a much more obvious banner across the top or something. But PMs might provide a useful additional way to contact offenders.

Incidentally what’s the uptake like on the PM feature? Are people actually using it? How many people on this thread even know it exists?

I called Gregory Porter a **** on another thread and wasn’t punished at all. He is though. Stupid big shitty hat wearing ****.