Forgot to have this thread saved.
Dear Lucid - with the ever-watching eye of Google on us, you and the moderator team are understandably worried about profanity usage, since it's in the Google TOS. Here's a solution that will make the forums and website a better place and keep Adsense happy.
Prohibited Text in Usernames - No offensive user names can be created if you add a feature that blocks them. When a user tries to create a username with profanity or slurs or other vulgarity, they would get a message, "This username contains prohibited text! Try again!" - Add any variant of these words you can think of to the filter and anyone who tries to bypass the filter will be banned on-sight.
Toggleable Censors across the site - ON by Default - Using that same list of unacceptable language, add the option across the site to have censors. All of the unacceptable language would be removed for anyone who has it turned on and to all guests who are not logged in. Allow anyone who doesn't mind language to turn off the censors in their account settings.<br> 2b. Censors could work in three different ways. In order of preference:
- Word Replacement - Any use of a foul word would be swapped with a non-foul counterpart. F*** could become Funk or Frick. S*** can become doodoo. Etc. We are willing to compile a list for you, just tell us the format.
- Asterisks - Simple enough but not very attractive. Full redaction would be necessary according to Nikki, so all letters in a word would become ****. This may also interfere with how you have formatting in OPs.
- [CENSORED] - Even more crude but it slaps you right in the face.
Trying to prevent profanity all around is unrealistic and will be impossible to keep up with for the moderators. Furthermore, the Google TOS is less strict than you realize when it comes to many of the issues you are worried about. These solutions will keep adsense happy, prevent the hassle of having to delete and suspend for every single f-word, and will limit how much of our speech is stunted.
Finally, all of this should be in conjunction with a flagging system. The flagging system will allow users to instantly alert moderators to any x-rated or otherwise inappropriate material.
