Swear Filter - Please Read - Important

[Captain Colonial]

An Announcement On Behalf Of The Moderation Team Regarding The Swear Filter

 

Almost all of you will be aware that the forum operates with a "swear filter", where any foul or offensive language typed by a user is automatically moderated.  It has always been felt by Committees both past and present that while this sort of language may be a common occurrence in daily life, it is offensive and unnecessary in the public forum of an organisation that takes pride in calling itself "the friendly club".  The Moderation Team believes that the majority of members understand, agree with and respect this.

 

We would remind you of the following extract from the the Forum Guidelines, to which ALL OF US agreed to abide with when we each signed up:

 

"You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this Message Board to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violates any law."

 

In general, the automatic swear filter works very well, and saves the Moderation Team considerable extra work.  However, it is not infallible and as is human nature, a few members have for some time been pushing the boundaries by trying to work around the swear filter through deliberate use of minor misspellings, using numbers in place of letters, placing spaces in between letters, and so on.  Each time, the Moderation Team has had to discuss the issue, warn the member in question, then delve into the software backstage and add the new variation attempt at bypassing the swear filter to the list of automatically banned words, all of which has unnecessarily taken up considerable amounts of their free time and effort.  Dozens and dozens of words or variations therein have had to be added manually over the past 18 months.

 

The Moderation Team then attempted, again with considerable time and effort, to use humour and lighten things up by substituting the asterisks normally automatically replacing two particular terms with the words "dangler" and "nunney", which they hoped would discourage members trying to bypass the swear filter.  This seemed, at first, to be well received and a good compromise.

 

However, the deliberate attempts at bypassing the swear filter, and the resulting necessary work by the Moderation Team, are once again on the rise to the point where it has been decided that this can no longer be tolerated.  The swear filter is a tool which is there for a very good reason, so posting this type of language (even if the swear filter doesn't catch it) or deliberate attempts to bypass it, for whatever reason, will be considered a disciplinary offence and result in the member in question receiving an automatic ban on posting in the forum as follows:

 

1st offence: 24 hour posting ban

2nd offence: 36 hour posting ban

3rd offence: 48 hour posting ban

4th offence: 72 hour posting ban

5th offence: 1 week posting ban

6th offence: 1 month posting ban and review of member's status within the club

 

(Note: This is not a ban on reading the forum - just on creating public posts.)

 

On a related note, the Moderation Team recognise that the filtering of the word "knob" has been problematical at times in relation to words like "gear knob" or describing dashboard controls, for example.  This is also the case with the Christian or surname of "Dick".  Therefore with immediate effect, automatic filtering of "knob" and "Dick", and variations of these words, has been removed.  However, using the word "knob" or "Dick", or a derivation therein as a term for anything but technical or name reasons (abuse, derision, "comedy" effect, etc.) will be considered offensive and result in a posting ban being applied as above.

 

Let us be very clear about this - do not rely on the swear filter to moderate your posts!  If you type something offensive and it gets through, you're still responsible because YOU were the person who typed it, and you WILL get a forum posting ban.  If you want to avoid this, it's very simple - follow the rules we all agreed to and don't type offensive words!

 

The Moderation Team trust you will understand and appreciate the reasoning and need for this action, which is taken with the best interest of the Club as a whole in mind - thank you.