Forums » Suggestions
The title may be misleading, but what this is is basically a natural,non-toggle-able chat filter that sensors words such as the N-word.,Racial slurs, and Offensive terms. This should be implemented on 100 to mitigate some of the arguments.
This filter is not able to be toggled such as the main filter. This will resolve some of the issues, In retrospect,atleast.
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I object. I believe chat filter is on by default, and that is good enough for me.
I object. I believe chat filter is on by default, and that is good enough for me.
Yes but most of us don't have chat filter on because we curse. Alot. When things get out of hand do you really want someone calling you a N*, even if you aren't? Certain words should be auto censored in my opinion, and that is that.
A noob playing with the settings could possibly turn it off and see this vulgarity. That is what drives players away,not drawing them in. Another option would be to have a no-tolerance permamute. Everyone wants to cry when it happens and I don't like cryers,so let's nip this in the ass while we have the option to do so. That is if Incarnate actually agrees with me on the other hand.
I do not think that anything can sufficiently protect people from themselves.
Stop swearing, and turn the filter back on.
Nothing can or will protect you from your worst enemy, you.
Stop swearing, and turn the filter back on.
Nothing can or will protect you from your worst enemy, you.
The N word and other extremely offensive words should always be censored, cuss words should not.
I am against the "second tier to the chat filter" element of this suggestion, for two reasons:
1) There is already some confusion[1] about whether or not it is "ok" to use words caught by the optional filter. I think that adding a new non-optional tier will, rather than elevating certain slurs and word into the land of "never say," push all the other words down into a "not so bad after all" category. The sort of person that would use a slur would continue using that slur regardless of the filter, and everyone else would just pat themselves on the back for staying within the bounds of the "optional filter."
2) A chat filter doesn't actually do much to control the long term tone of the chat. It's not like seeing a magical combination of letters automatically kicks your brain into "outrage mode." It is the context and history of the words in question and the people saying them that make the chat upsetting and outrageous.
Sure, if I see someone say "bedwetting little ******," not knowing the details of what that person said might make me less upset and outraged in the moment, but in the long run just serves to help the sorts of people that do use slurs thrive in this community longer. Which I do not see as a positive trade off.
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I support the "automated response" aspect: within the context of the new report system, I think anything that words should automatically trigger a review. I would actually be surprised if there isn't already some automated flagging.
Edit: forgot to add, I would also suggest that the automated report have a public facing message, something along the lines of "*** Player {player name}'s recent chat message has been automatically reported, and will be reviewed by a moderator" as a deterrent. Or at least a message to the auto-reported player.
Note [1]:
I don't mean to imply that Whistler is on my side here, just borrowing his observation. In fact, here is a post that suggests that we're landing on different sides of this.
1) There is already some confusion[1] about whether or not it is "ok" to use words caught by the optional filter. I think that adding a new non-optional tier will, rather than elevating certain slurs and word into the land of "never say," push all the other words down into a "not so bad after all" category. The sort of person that would use a slur would continue using that slur regardless of the filter, and everyone else would just pat themselves on the back for staying within the bounds of the "optional filter."
2) A chat filter doesn't actually do much to control the long term tone of the chat. It's not like seeing a magical combination of letters automatically kicks your brain into "outrage mode." It is the context and history of the words in question and the people saying them that make the chat upsetting and outrageous.
Sure, if I see someone say "bedwetting little ******," not knowing the details of what that person said might make me less upset and outraged in the moment, but in the long run just serves to help the sorts of people that do use slurs thrive in this community longer. Which I do not see as a positive trade off.
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I support the "automated response" aspect: within the context of the new report system, I think anything that words should automatically trigger a review. I would actually be surprised if there isn't already some automated flagging.
Edit: forgot to add, I would also suggest that the automated report have a public facing message, something along the lines of "*** Player {player name}'s recent chat message has been automatically reported, and will be reviewed by a moderator" as a deterrent. Or at least a message to the auto-reported player.
Note [1]:
I don't mean to imply that Whistler is on my side here, just borrowing his observation. In fact, here is a post that suggests that we're landing on different sides of this.
Just reinforcing what genka mentioned about the new Report system, I mentioned this on the other thread:
I was also considering having terms like racial slurs just automatically warn people about that kind of content, and then mute them for a brief period, or some such. As opposed to replacing the slur with some other word.
So, basically, not a "filter" but rather a full "warning" system and mild auto-mute for people trying to use really offensive and racist terms, without their comment ever being visible. Of course, that will be a pretty small subset of terms overall (you start to get into false-positives at some point), but would hopefully catch and limit some bad behaviour.
I was also considering having terms like racial slurs just automatically warn people about that kind of content, and then mute them for a brief period, or some such. As opposed to replacing the slur with some other word.
So, basically, not a "filter" but rather a full "warning" system and mild auto-mute for people trying to use really offensive and racist terms, without their comment ever being visible. Of course, that will be a pretty small subset of terms overall (you start to get into false-positives at some point), but would hopefully catch and limit some bad behaviour.
The variants neger and negar derive from various Mediterranean language words for "black", including the Spanish and Portuguese word negro (black) and the now-pejorative French nègre. Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger (black) (pronounced [ˈniɡer] which, in every other grammatical case, grammatical gender, and grammatical number besides nominative masculine singular, is nigr- followed by a case ending, the r is trilled).
In its original English language usage, nigger (then spelled niger) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775.
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger
Limiting a person's ability to speak, limits their ability to collectively think. The offensiveness of a word is in the context of usage, and not the word itself. You are preaching "thought censorship", where we can not even openly condemn, the very thing that you claim to oppose.
edit:
SR_7134_HELLCAT "Yes but most of us don't have chat filter on because we curse."
Stop asking that all of us be moderated based on your own personal failure. We can moderate you independently from the rest of us.
In its original English language usage, nigger (then spelled niger) was a word for a dark-skinned individual. The earliest known published use of the term dates from 1574, in a work alluding to "the Nigers of Aethiop, bearing witnes". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first derogatory usage of the term nigger was recorded two centuries later, in 1775.
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger
Limiting a person's ability to speak, limits their ability to collectively think. The offensiveness of a word is in the context of usage, and not the word itself. You are preaching "thought censorship", where we can not even openly condemn, the very thing that you claim to oppose.
edit:
SR_7134_HELLCAT "Yes but most of us don't have chat filter on because we curse."
Stop asking that all of us be moderated based on your own personal failure. We can moderate you independently from the rest of us.
You are preaching "thought censorship", where we can not even openly condemn, the very thing that you claim to oppose.
No.. I'm preaching speech-censorship, which is a critical reality of the management of all privately-run online communities, in 2019. Especially if a reactive barrier can help to train new people to not be a problem in the first place. That's a tremendous win, especially for administrative overhead.
"Open condemnation" is not currently a valid response policy in VO. Administrative action is the only valid response.
No.. I'm preaching speech-censorship, which is a critical reality of the management of all privately-run online communities, in 2019. Especially if a reactive barrier can help to train new people to not be a problem in the first place. That's a tremendous win, especially for administrative overhead.
"Open condemnation" is not currently a valid response policy in VO. Administrative action is the only valid response.
@incarnate: You are limiting community opinion, to your opinion. You are fundamentally altering the product that you are now selling. It is no longer a community, so much as it is "visitors". You are ripping the very context out of "community". It was good visiting with you, incarnate.
edit: You have not objected ( that I have noted ) to open communications on off topic channels, and thus, community could still thrive. But do rethink this perspective, that the community should not have a degree of independent authority, to think what it thinks, and say what it says. To be wrong, and be openly corrected for it. It is not a community otherwise.
edit: You have not objected ( that I have noted ) to open communications on off topic channels, and thus, community could still thrive. But do rethink this perspective, that the community should not have a degree of independent authority, to think what it thinks, and say what it says. To be wrong, and be openly corrected for it. It is not a community otherwise.
@incarnate: You are limiting community opinion, to your opinion. You are fundamentally altering the product that you are now selling. It is no longer a community, so much as it is "visitors". You are ripping the very context out of "community". It was good visiting with you, incarnate.
Look, you should choose to do whatever you like, but you seem to be exercising some cognitive dissonance..
The reason why "open condemnation" is an invalid response, is because it is always unhelpful. Trolling is fundamentally based around getting the "lulz" from achieving a response. The addition of anonymity + distance into human culture creates a gamification of any response in some people. There is no version of "open condemnation", no matter how brilliant or cutting, that does not result in the troll giggling to themselves and feeling they "won". I've witnessed this, in practice, since 1991, long before the advent of the web or social media.
When interacting in physical reality, these bad behaviours are curbed by a possibility of being punched in the face. But, until there's an internet equivalent of this, I'm stuck making stupid hacks to try and minimize things, to keep a product "accessible to most" without going insane myself.
As for your other comment: Direction of this game, and implementation thereof, has-always, and shall-always be done according to my opinion. This is my product, my oversight is absolute. I am, at-best, a "benevolent dictator". I'm open to hearing feedback from people, and open to re-visiting my own opinions, but ultimately any choices about implementation are mine.. so.. yeah, of course it's my opinion. But that's nothing new?
edit: You have not objected ( that I have noted ) to open communications on off topic channels, and thus, community could still thrive. But do rethink this perspective, that the community should not have a degree of independent authority, to think what it thinks, and say what it says. It is not a community otherwise.
My goals are primarily directed at 100 and 1, areas with the largest audience and the largest negative potential for broad-band impact from a tiny number of bad actors (and, statistically, this has been proven true by studies in many other games, trolls make up a vocal sub-1% on average).
But, for your part, please appreciate that it's relatively easy to be unflinchingly uncompromising and idealistic. It may not seem that way, but it's far easier to do that, than it is to thread the needle, in the midst of a techno-social evolution of our entire species, to try and find mitigating options to make environments reasonably "accessible" to "most", while still trying to retain the best aspects of "community".
Look, you should choose to do whatever you like, but you seem to be exercising some cognitive dissonance..
The reason why "open condemnation" is an invalid response, is because it is always unhelpful. Trolling is fundamentally based around getting the "lulz" from achieving a response. The addition of anonymity + distance into human culture creates a gamification of any response in some people. There is no version of "open condemnation", no matter how brilliant or cutting, that does not result in the troll giggling to themselves and feeling they "won". I've witnessed this, in practice, since 1991, long before the advent of the web or social media.
When interacting in physical reality, these bad behaviours are curbed by a possibility of being punched in the face. But, until there's an internet equivalent of this, I'm stuck making stupid hacks to try and minimize things, to keep a product "accessible to most" without going insane myself.
As for your other comment: Direction of this game, and implementation thereof, has-always, and shall-always be done according to my opinion. This is my product, my oversight is absolute. I am, at-best, a "benevolent dictator". I'm open to hearing feedback from people, and open to re-visiting my own opinions, but ultimately any choices about implementation are mine.. so.. yeah, of course it's my opinion. But that's nothing new?
edit: You have not objected ( that I have noted ) to open communications on off topic channels, and thus, community could still thrive. But do rethink this perspective, that the community should not have a degree of independent authority, to think what it thinks, and say what it says. It is not a community otherwise.
My goals are primarily directed at 100 and 1, areas with the largest audience and the largest negative potential for broad-band impact from a tiny number of bad actors (and, statistically, this has been proven true by studies in many other games, trolls make up a vocal sub-1% on average).
But, for your part, please appreciate that it's relatively easy to be unflinchingly uncompromising and idealistic. It may not seem that way, but it's far easier to do that, than it is to thread the needle, in the midst of a techno-social evolution of our entire species, to try and find mitigating options to make environments reasonably "accessible" to "most", while still trying to retain the best aspects of "community".
I'm not specifically targeting myself as a "fuckup" or whatever you said about having chat filter off, Rather sliding in other non-topic posts.
I used the N word as an example; Not specifically limiting it to just THAT. What I'm saying is I'm offering a solution to an ongoing issue,not just saying it is the ONLY solution. This is the *suggestions* forum, Not the one person is right and the rest are wrong forums, You seemed to have over read my suggestion,maybe a little too much. My original suggestion was to Auto-Censor words such as racial slurs or offensive derogatory terms that one might take offense to in order to help seed player retention. Not to limit one's rights of freedom of speech, In the end it's up to Incarnate on these suggestions, Not to criticise him on his decisions on the issue. Now,Please,Don't spin my thread off topic and get it locked because you have a "better" idea. Simply add to the original suggestion. If we don't fix this stuff now, We won't even have a game to debate about in the near future.
EDIT: Genka's general idea seems like a good rendition of the original Idea.
I used the N word as an example; Not specifically limiting it to just THAT. What I'm saying is I'm offering a solution to an ongoing issue,not just saying it is the ONLY solution. This is the *suggestions* forum, Not the one person is right and the rest are wrong forums, You seemed to have over read my suggestion,maybe a little too much. My original suggestion was to Auto-Censor words such as racial slurs or offensive derogatory terms that one might take offense to in order to help seed player retention. Not to limit one's rights of freedom of speech, In the end it's up to Incarnate on these suggestions, Not to criticise him on his decisions on the issue. Now,Please,Don't spin my thread off topic and get it locked because you have a "better" idea. Simply add to the original suggestion. If we don't fix this stuff now, We won't even have a game to debate about in the near future.
EDIT: Genka's general idea seems like a good rendition of the original Idea.
@incarnate:
I support your efforts to make public facing chat commercially appealing.
But I also support "community". Part of "community" is free thought, and community regulation of individuals of the community. Most humans do most of their thinking, collectively. A single human doesn't generally get much thinking accomplished by themselves. Individuals are corrected, by being wrong, and by watching others be wrong, by being corrected, and watching others be corrected. Open correction is a key ingredient of "community".
I can see where we can have both, segregated. Please limit forced censorship to public channels.
Community is not necessarily a thing that should be openly observed from outside the community. It can get dirty.
@SR_7134_HELLCAT:
Forced censorship may be a good idea, in limited settings. There is a time to be polite. There is a time to get to the truth, as politely as possible perhaps, but uncensored. There is rarely any good reason to use the word "nigger". And being able to say exactly that, is my first argument against censorship.
I support your efforts to make public facing chat commercially appealing.
But I also support "community". Part of "community" is free thought, and community regulation of individuals of the community. Most humans do most of their thinking, collectively. A single human doesn't generally get much thinking accomplished by themselves. Individuals are corrected, by being wrong, and by watching others be wrong, by being corrected, and watching others be corrected. Open correction is a key ingredient of "community".
I can see where we can have both, segregated. Please limit forced censorship to public channels.
Community is not necessarily a thing that should be openly observed from outside the community. It can get dirty.
@SR_7134_HELLCAT:
Forced censorship may be a good idea, in limited settings. There is a time to be polite. There is a time to get to the truth, as politely as possible perhaps, but uncensored. There is rarely any good reason to use the word "nigger". And being able to say exactly that, is my first argument against censorship.
I suppose as long as you ain't calling or using it at anyone it's differen't, But if you say "I gotta go feed me n*gger,he's tied up in the garage",THAT's very different. There's definitely a time and place for everything, But to not sound hypocritical, I am proud to call myself a redneck, I fly a rebel flag outside my house. That does not mean I'm a nazi. That does not mean I hate black people. I just have pride for my heritage,If I hated them why would I be arguing to make them more comfortable? Hence my main account "HighTechRedneck"
The community does not share risk equally with Guild Software. If people don't play because we have a nasty reputation here, we just lose a game - but Incarnate loses his livelihood. Sometimes decisions can be made in a collaborative structure, but others must be made in a consultative structure. Inc asked us for a consultation, but he has to make the final decision because he has to live with it.
Racial and sexual slurs should never be okay and I support Inc's idea of an automatic warning and perhaps mute.
Racial and sexual slurs should never be okay and I support Inc's idea of an automatic warning and perhaps mute.
That said, there is no expectation of free speech either on this forum or within the game. Both are privately owned and operated. The fact that this post will probably have a single paragraph in the near future is evidence of that :)
[!!! ;) -W]
You should probably also stop referring to people as "them" on the basis of their skin color.
Them,him,she,their,it,etc. As long as you know what i mean it works, I don't mean anything by it so don't take it in that fashion. Some of us here were raised very different than that of others. That flag is all I know, I was born with it outside,and guess what, It'll be outside until I die. You can take my rights, you can take my life, but you won't take my heritage. I'm not proud of the slave part, To me the flag signifies my ancestors and not what they did. Unless you step into my boots, you can't criticise me (or incarnate) For my decisions. Now do you see why I brought that up dear fellow? The game is not about the person IRL, It's about what they do In-game that makes them a unique character. Mine is just inspired my RL-me. And I'm not the only one of my kind here. Just know that.