New Allowance to the In-Game Word Filter

[RaveRadbury]

After discussion with the host, MSO has allowed for "nigger" to be added to the in-game word filter. An examination of its use in the community has found that most uses of it are OOC, and the signal-to-noise level of usage on both the OOC metric and the racist metric is poor enough to not warrant caring about the edge cases. If added, messages containing it will be rejected just like with other filtered words.

Since the creation of Rule 11 there have been many conversations about how adding slurs to the filter was not possible because it did not fit with the host's vision of avoiding the creation of a banned word list.

As the community has not been able to discuss this possibility in earnest we would prefer having a period of open discussion before deciding to act on it.

Please share your thoughts about this opportunity.

[wesoda25]

I find it odd that we acknowledge that there are words which are so bad they are not worth having on our servers, yet don't include equally inappropriate words in that category. "Tranny" comes to mind first, and "faggot" as well, although the latter at least was socially acceptable at a time. I feel it sends an odd message. Specifically with the former I cannot imagine any sort of worthwhile IC interaction which depends upon this word, I feel it will only generate drama and more bans and appeals and discussions until we eventually decide to include it on the list as well.

[Jonathan Gupta]

[Stickymayhem]

I find it odd that we acknowledge that there are words which are so bad they are not worth having on our servers, yet don't include equally inappropriate words in that category. "Tranny" comes to mind first, and "faggot" as well, although the latter at least was socially acceptable at a time. I feel it sends an odd message. Specifically with the former I cannot imagine any sort of worthwhile IC interaction which depends upon this word, I feel it will only generate drama and more bans and appeals and discussions until we eventually decide to include it on the list as well.

Frankly the reason for this is because instances of those other slurs are often more obviously bigoted and easy to punish for because they haven't made their way into such common usage. The desire to make specifically that work culturally acceptable in the community has been successful over the last couple of years, and it's a problem that increased over time until we reached the point of implementing rule 11. If you were to replace many instances of the n-word with "Black people" it would actually make the sentence more bigoted, which is an indication of how normalised the slur itself became.

It's so universal that I genuinely believe many of the people responding to ahelps with the phrase "I thought it was normal here". They are right. It's normalized here. Admin intervention would have to have the specific, uncaring brutal consistency of an actual banbot to clear this problem over the course of months, let alone immediately.

OR, we can just add it to the fucking filter and be done with this forever.

When it comes to other slurs, they are equally abhorrent, but do not hold the same cultural acceptability on the server, so pragmatically there is far less need to use a filter. They are both rarer and more obvious. There is essentially no situation you can use the t-slur without it being an obvious instance of bigotry. There is no acceptable colloquial reclamation of the word in common parlance.

TL;DR

It's pragmatically necessary, not ethically consistent

[Jonathan Gupta]

can I still say ligger? Asking for a friend.

[Agux909]

I feel like allowing people to actually write those words can give an easier time exposing individuals using them in bad faith and openly showing their bigotry. This is the objective of the rule after all right? To eject bigotry from the community.

Having some cases in which their use is not actionable by admins (ie:"good morning my good niggas"), albeit still not preferred by many, I think has its disadvantages outweighed by the advantages.

People should be free to express themselves, but do so minding others and abiding by the spirit of the rules of the community they're part of. I believe this effort and consideration needs to come fully from oneself, and not from a word censor.

[Istoprocent1]

Why not have a corrective filter for words and/or phrases that are deemed to be not suitable rather than the message just not going through?

Somebody says: "X is such a [insert gamerword]" and the filter would change the message to "X is such a [insert randomized palatable replacement word]".

[Stickymayhem]

I feel like allowing people to actually write those words can give an easier time exposing individuals using them in bad faith and openly showing their bigotry. This is the objective of the rule after all right? To eject bigotry from the community.

Having some cases in which their use is not actionable by admins (ie:"good morning my good niggas"), albeit still not preferred by many, I think has its disadvantages outweighed by the advantages.

People should be free to express themselves, but do so minding others and abiding by the spirit of the rules of the community they're part of. I believe this effort and consideration needs to come fully from oneself, and not from a word censor.

Our intention is not to run a fucking honeypot. We are not trying to trap and ban people with shitty opinions, we want to keep the shitty opinions off our fucking video game

[Agux909]

I feel like allowing people to actually write those words can give an easier time exposing individuals using them in bad faith and openly showing their bigotry. This is the objective of the rule after all right? To eject bigotry from the community.

Having some cases in which their use is not actionable by admins (ie:"good morning my good niggas"), albeit still not preferred by many, I think has its disadvantages outweighed by the advantages.

People should be free to express themselves, but do so minding others and abiding by the spirit of the rules of the community they're part of. I believe this effort and consideration needs to come fully from oneself, and not from a word censor.

Our intention is not to run a fucking honeypot. We are not trying to trap and ban people with shitty opinions, we want to keep the shitty opinions off our fucking video game

You neglect the final part of my post. Do you disagree with that? Would you rather have people find new, greyer ways to be bigoted and put admins into an even harder position because they aren't sure if someone is being bigoted or not?

I don't mind a word filter, I just feel like it's not the best way to tackle bigotry, and that the way it's being done now (specially with the recent change to rule 11) is ideal, and works fine.

However, if the consensus is to add the word filter, I'm not going to be against it.

[Cobby]

No the rule is not to eject bigots, its to stop expression of bigotry.

Bigots can still say "nigga pls" or "what are you faggots playing" or even not use any slurs in any context at all. You can still hate the gays/blacks/trans people to the same degree as you can before, you just cant have that manifest into something that can be picked up by someone else. If we exclusively had intent to eject actual bigots, you would have to concede jokes that expressed bigotry but did not express the user's true beliefs would need to be allowed.

The word filter is ideal here because people who use slurs as part of their (crass) language but not with the specific intent to be bigoted towards people can still SAY the word but it just wont go thru, which is a good way to encourage people to avoid using the word altogether.

More importantly, I find that some of the admins have a very zealous passion for banning slurs which includes some of the headmins, so I would like them to not be involved in the process unless needed. Word filters are great in that regard because it does not have a black friend who you cant seem to ever actually invite to ss13, and therefore you're not having to RTD if you drop a slur out of anger or what have you.

Really words like faggot/tranny/etc. should also be added, anything that takes admins out of the equation, especially when the only defense in the thread so far is that theyre even more obviously used in bigoted instances. If its just the n word that just goes to show the ratio of North Americans on the headmin team lol.

[Agux909]

No the rule is not to eject bigots, its to stop expression of bigotry.

Bigots can still say "nigga pls" or "what are you faggots playing" or even not use any slurs in any context at all. You can still hate the gays/blacks/trans people to the same degree as you can before, you just cant have that manifest into something that can be picked up by someone else. If we exclusively had intent to eject actual bigots, you would have to concede jokes that expressed bigotry but did not express the user's true beliefs would need to be allowed.

The word filter is ideal here because people who use slurs as part of their (crass) language but not with the specific intent to be bigoted towards people can still SAY the word but it just wont go thru, which is a good way to encourage people to avoid using the word altogether.

More importantly, I find that some of the admins have a very zealous passion for banning slurs which includes some of the headmins, so I would like them to not be involved in the process unless needed. Word filters are great in that regard because it does not have a black friend who you cant seem to ever actually invite to ss13, and therefore you're not having to RTD if you drop a slur out of anger or what have you.

Really words like faggot/tranny/etc. should also be added, anything that takes admins out of the equation, especially when the only defense in the thread so far is that theyre even more obviously used in bigoted instances. If its just the n word that just goes to show the ratio of North Americans on the headmin team lol.

When I said "eject bigotry" I obviously meant its expression. I don't need you to tell me there isn't a thought police, and that everyone can think whatever they want, it's not rocket science.

That's why I said the effort should come from oneself to be considerate to others. If you can't do the most basic thing that is not expressing your bigotry openly, you should be ejected.

[toemas]

[Cobby]

When I said "eject bigotry" I obviously meant its expression. I don't need you to tell me there isn't a thought police, and that everyone can think whatever they want, it's not rocket science.

That's why I said the effort should come from oneself to be considerate to others. If you can't do the most basic thing that is not expressing your bigotry openly, you should be ejected.

The nuance is important though specifically because some people believe simply using the word regardless of context makes you a bigot, which is something I disagree with. Im guessing people realize this to some degree because despite the "i cant ever invite my black friend to tg" stories we still have these people active in the community, so either they're cool with the alleged bigotry or they understand that some usage of slurs is isnt completely "we literally hate all X people" and theyre simply trying to curate the level of expressed-but-not-actual bigotry.

The effort still requires you to be considerate to others because otherwise YOU are disadvantaged by not having your messages sent. Unless you're going to argue that we shouldnt have any bigotry rule and we rely on gentleman's agreement your point doesnt even make sense since having admins act as the word filter has the same argument.

[Stickymayhem]

Why not have a corrective filter for words and/or phrases that are deemed to be not suitable rather than the message just not going through?

Somebody says: "X is such a [insert gamerword]" and the filter would change the message to "X is such a [insert randomized palatable replacement word]".

changing the n-word into "puppies" would just turn puppies into a dogwhistle instantly

[Agux909]

When I said "eject bigotry" I obviously meant its expression. I don't need you to tell me there isn't a thought police, and that everyone can think whatever they want, it's not rocket science.

That's why I said the effort should come from oneself to be considerate to others. If you can't do the most basic thing that is not expressing your bigotry openly, you should be ejected.

The nuance is important though specifically because some people believe simply using the word regardless of context makes you a bigot, which is something I disagree with. Im guessing people realize this to some degree because despite the "i cant ever invite my black friend to tg" stories we still have these people active in the community, so either they're cool with the alleged bigotry or they understand that some usage of slurs is isnt completely "we literally hate all X people" and theyre simply trying to curate the level of expressed-but-not-actual bigotry.

The effort still requires you to be considerate to others because otherwise YOU are disadvantaged by not having your messages sent. Unless you're going to argue that we shouldnt have any bigotry rule and we rely on gentleman's agreement your point doesnt even make sense since having admins act as the word filter has the same argument.

Completely disagree with that last part. My point is just that the rule works right now, as it was intended to work, and that we don't really need a list of filtered words. The one that put the rule and specifically said didn't want a list of banned words was the Host himself. If you're saying my point 100% doesn't make sense, you're then at least partially saying MSO's intentions with rule 11 don't make sense.

Not having ANY bigotry rule would be the real "honeypot", as Sticky mentioned in their previous post. Because we as a community would still want to eject the expression of bigotry, and not having any rule about it would mean we'd be passively attracting bigots to a trap.

[Stickymayhem]

When I said "eject bigotry" I obviously meant its expression. I don't need you to tell me there isn't a thought police, and that everyone can think whatever they want, it's not rocket science.

That's why I said the effort should come from oneself to be considerate to others. If you can't do the most basic thing that is not expressing your bigotry openly, you should be ejected.

The nuance is important though specifically because some people believe simply using the word regardless of context makes you a bigot, which is something I disagree with. Im guessing people realize this to some degree because despite the "i cant ever invite my black friend to tg" stories we still have these people active in the community, so either they're cool with the alleged bigotry or they understand that some usage of slurs is isnt completely "we literally hate all X people" and theyre simply trying to curate the level of expressed-but-not-actual bigotry.

The effort still requires you to be considerate to others because otherwise YOU are disadvantaged by not having your messages sent. Unless you're going to argue that we shouldnt have any bigotry rule and we rely on gentleman's agreement your point doesnt even make sense since having admins act as the word filter has the same argument.

Completely disagree with that last part. My point is just that the rule works right now, as it was intended to work, and that we don't really need a list of filtered words. The one that put the rule and specifically said didn't want a list of banned words was the Host himself. If you're saying my point 100% doesn't make sense, you're then at least partially saying MSO's intentions with rule 11 don't make sense.

Not having ANY bigotry rule would be the real "honeypot", as Sticky mentioned in their previous post. Because we as a community would still want to eject the expression of bigotry, and not having any rule about it would mean we'd be passively attracting bigots to a trap.

Everything you're writing in this thread is incorrect. We had no bigotry rule. The result was unrestricted bigotry. We had a strong minority of Nazis extremely happily advocating for the genocides of all jews, black people, gays etc.every day in OOC and IC. Until we had a rule that removed bigotry, bigotry was not removed.

There is still a huge amount of bigotry on some servers and we've had Rule 11 for a year. The filter will work better.

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

[Jonathan Gupta]

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

delusional and misinformed for 50 points, please.

[Agux909]

When I said "eject bigotry" I obviously meant its expression. I don't need you to tell me there isn't a thought police, and that everyone can think whatever they want, it's not rocket science.

That's why I said the effort should come from oneself to be considerate to others. If you can't do the most basic thing that is not expressing your bigotry openly, you should be ejected.

The nuance is important though specifically because some people believe simply using the word regardless of context makes you a bigot, which is something I disagree with. Im guessing people realize this to some degree because despite the "i cant ever invite my black friend to tg" stories we still have these people active in the community, so either they're cool with the alleged bigotry or they understand that some usage of slurs is isnt completely "we literally hate all X people" and theyre simply trying to curate the level of expressed-but-not-actual bigotry.

The effort still requires you to be considerate to others because otherwise YOU are disadvantaged by not having your messages sent. Unless you're going to argue that we shouldnt have any bigotry rule and we rely on gentleman's agreement your point doesnt even make sense since having admins act as the word filter has the same argument.

Completely disagree with that last part. My point is just that the rule works right now, as it was intended to work, and that we don't really need a list of filtered words. The one that put the rule and specifically said didn't want a list of banned words was the Host himself. If you're saying my point 100% doesn't make sense, you're then at least partially saying MSO's intentions with rule 11 don't make sense.

Not having ANY bigotry rule would be the real "honeypot", as Sticky mentioned in their previous post. Because we as a community would still want to eject the expression of bigotry, and not having any rule about it would mean we'd be passively attracting bigots to a trap.

Everything you're writing in this thread is incorrect. We had no bigotry rule. The result was unrestricted bigotry. We had a strong minority of Nazis extremely happily advocating for the genocides of all jews, black people, gays etc.every day in OOC and IC. Until we had a rule that removed bigotry, bigotry was not removed.

There is still a huge amount of bigotry on some servers and we've had Rule 11 for a year. The filter will work better.

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

I might be missinformed by my own experiences then, because from my point of view I have seen bans being applied, and lately no bigotry in Sybil. Can't speak for every single place at every time because I'm not omniscient, unfortunately.

Also don't try to put me into the "opposite side" just because I bring a different opinion to a policy thread. I even said I wouldn't mind the filter if the consensus was that it was needed. Can you please keep it civil? Thanks.

[Farquaar]

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

Wouldn’t be a true Rule 11 thread without Sticky snidely insinuating that a community member is a racist.

[Stickymayhem]

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

Wouldn’t be a true Rule 11 thread without Sticky snidely insinuating that a community member is a racist.

I offered two alternatives they were perfectly able to accept instead :^)

[Agux909]

I don't know whether you're delusional, completely misinformed on the real state of the problems that we had, or smokescreening for nazis with concern trolling because you're sympathetic to bigotry.

Wouldn’t be a true Rule 11 thread without Sticky snidely insinuating that a community member is a racist.

I offered two alternatives they were perfectly able to accept instead :^)

This is not a slippery slope you're gonna make me fall into Sticky, you even offering that "option" is completely out of place.

We're here to discuss and to help reach an agreement, prompted by the current headmin no less.

Also I'm just a player, you're an admin, former headmin and someone who was in the community for way longer than me. You should know better.

As I said, keep it civil, or let civil people discuss here, which is what was happening before your "multiple choice" post.

[Cobby]

Im still confused on the take that the extent of how many times a slur says matters for enforcement. It's not like say getting people killed in the videogame that sometimes can be hand waved with rule of cool, it's either you are ok with the words being said ingame (perhaps only in specific incidences) or you're not to the point you want to enforce not saying them.

Unless youre going to tell me you care about the performance cost of the server and you think the filter is going to make it take a impactful hit, im totally lost on trying to actually extrapolate the motives behind not putting it behind something more foolproof than admins unless you DO want slurs to be said on occassion and then missed. Even if theres some edge case where false positives exists, the only trouble is you have to retype the message (ctrl+up).

The "good faith meter" is slowly falling down with each consecutive post lol.

[Agux909]

Im still confused on the take that the extent of how many times a slur says matters for enforcement. It's not like say getting people killed in the videogame that sometimes can be hand waved with rule of cool, it's either you are ok with the words being said ingame (perhaps only in specific incidences) or you're not to the point you want to enforce not saying them.

Unless youre going to tell me you care about the performance cost of the server and you think the filter is going to make it take a impactful hit, im totally lost on trying to actually extrapolate the motives behind not putting it behind something more foolproof than admins unless you DO want slurs to be said on occassion and then missed. Even if theres some edge case where false positives exists, the only trouble is you have to retype the message (ctrl+up).

The "good faith meter" is slowly falling down with each consecutive post lol.

It's really not, but whatever. I'm just going to fall back into the simplest notion of what I'm trying to say here because obviously there's some miscommunication problem between us.

It is not our goal to create or enforce a list of banned words and instead our goal to eject the expression of bigotry from the community.

This is my last post here, the rest of interested parties can read my opinion and hopefully understand where I'm coming from (which is not "encouraging bigotry"), reflect from it or discard it.

If the consensus is that outright banning the words right now is the best option, then it shall be so. Remember that I am but a single individual and I can be wrong in my limited perception of the community at large.

[iamgoofball]

based, now add all the other slurs too

[wesoda25]

Filter is better than enforcement because everyone has a different stance on what is or isn’t acceptable. It completely removes the required action and inevitable subjectivity of admins which makes it easier for everyone.

[Misdoubtful]

Filter is better than enforcement because everyone has a different stance on what is or isn’t acceptable. It completely removes the required action and inevitable subjectivity of admins which makes it easier for everyone.

I like this approach but I'm also stuck acknowledging that filtering will never be the be all end all. It'd be a painful uphill battle for someone to want it to be, and that battle would never be winnable.

That said I can understand it as making a clear, concise stance on things.

[MrStonedOne]

I find it odd that we acknowledge that there are words which are so bad they are not worth having on our servers, yet don't include equally inappropriate words in that category. "Tranny" comes to mind first, and "faggot" as well, although the latter at least was socially acceptable at a time. I feel it sends an odd message. Specifically with the former I cannot imagine any sort of worthwhile IC interaction which depends upon this word, I feel it will only generate drama and more bans and appeals and discussions until we eventually decide to include it on the list as well.

Trying to equivalate tranny and faggot with nigger is some peak libtard woke shit.

I get that trying to equate them makes your point more valid, but it's still disingenuous.

nigger isn't getting word filtered because its bad, its getting word filtered because its ooc, because terry can't behave and the team seemed hesitant to just apply it to terry's filter list even thats where the majority of the abuse comes from, and because the mechanics of hard-rs is such that the venn graph of non-bigoted use cases and non-ooc use cases are mostly two circles so it doesn't need to be said in ic.

[Cobby]

tranny and faggot are also OOC by your own rule's metrics (homophobia vs xenophilia).

If we are comparing them to nigger by the metric of non-bigoted usecase frequency vs bigoted use case, yeah I think they're only used to directly call people faggot or tranny ingame so theyre comparable. I dont really care about the subjective comparison of "which slur is worse to use", since I think thats bigoted in itself to value certain "checkboxes" over others because theyre the hotter topic.

Also more importantly I think this is why the filter is good, on the rare instance you find an opening in the game where you can use faggot or tranny or nigger, nothing gets said and you move on with your life instead of having to talk to an admin for the rest of the shift contemplating if your specific version of faggot or tranny or nigga/er was done in a good manner. Taking admins out of the equation is a good thing, because quite frankly im tired of hearing the argument slide down the slope of acceptable usecases and this course of action still lets them play the game. Before the metric was "is the person black ic or ooc and the individual knew about it aka harassment", now you cant call them the word at all but if you call a group of people a slur like "what are you faggots doing" or you drop the er for A and then add plz like "nigga plz" there is somehow no expressed bigotry.

There is no common sense, just make the word filter and be done with it because I can at least guess what (you) want enforced if its on the list and people are purposefully dancing around it. I cant do that when I get "slurs are totally not ok but I also want to protect slurs used in certain phrases because they have sentimental value to me/the parts of the internet (i) frequent". Neither of those phrases have value to me and I have defended crass language multiple times on the board, but I am tired of picking brains on where the line gets drawn and letting people play ban frogger because it is bad-faith on the admin side to dance around the subject.

[Timberpoes]

can I still say ligger? Asking for a friend.

As an admeme I'd also like to know the answer to this. With nigger being promoted to full OOC word filtering, where does ligger sit on the spectrum of OOC/bigoted/not OOC/not bigoted?

[XivilaiAnaxes]

I imagine anyone with 3 brain cells to rub together would just go "huh okay, I'll add a third G"

[MrStonedOne]

now you cant call them the word at all but if you call a group of people a slur like "what are you faggots doing" or you drop the er for A and then add plz like "nigga plz" there is somehow no expressed bigotry.

Correct!

The words themselves are not bigoted on their own.

I get that we will never see eye to eye on this, but being insensitive != bigot.

I can call people who ride loud harleys around town in groups faggots without saying anything about gay people.

[Mothblocks]

I imagine anyone with 3 brain cells to rub together would just go "huh okay, I'll add a third G"

If you obviously try to go around the word filter, and are just as bigoted as before, then you're just preparing yourself for a harsher ban since you now know what you're doing is wrong.

[Cobby]

Correct!

The words themselves are not bigoted on their own.

I get that we will never see eye to eye on this, but being insensitive != bigot.

I can call people who ride loud harleys around town in groups faggots without saying anything about gay people.

I don’t disagree but my confusion is why is it bigoted but not just insensitive to use nigger so long as you’re not using the word directly to represent black people in the same way faggot, tranny, or even nigga gets enforced.

This is why I’m just for setting these all to just filter so there’s no real admin action and we can move on instead of admins having to pick your (I can easily guess the current headmin stance on slurs so don’t need to bother them) brain on whether the slur is on level with nigger or if it’s a fair use slur like faggot/tranny.

I’d rather we go back to the idea that you’re free to use slurs as crass language so long as you’re not using it to harass players or their ic characters and tell the black/trans/gay friends that totally exist that not everyone is as posh as them, but if we’re going down this line I rather we rip the bandaid instead of slowly peel it or leave it dangling

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I support this action but think the thread title was misleading.

[dragomagol]

The team has agreed to make this addition to the word filter, this policy thread will remain open for people to discuss its impact.

NamelessFairy: Yes
RaveRadbury: Yes
Dragomagol: Yes

[Super Aggro Crag]

good going terrytards you lost your gamer privileges

[iamgoofball]

based

[IcePacks]

good

[Boot]

Man that's so weird why is the guy who ran on a platform of "we will not have a list of banned words" voting to create a list of banned words I don't understand.

[Bytube]

people are already ranting in #politics-containment about why not being able to say the hard-R is bad

as if saying it didn't make you look like enough of a dumbass

[Armhulen]

Man that's so weird why is the guy who ran on a platform of "we will not have a list of banned words" voting to create a list of banned words I don't understand.

Headmin promises mean nothing and every term are repeatedly broken, it's not just rave it's every past headmin because headmins are politicians and politicians are LIARS

t. lying politian here

[SuperNovaa41]

jesus christ do we really need an entire policy thread about this? this community is so dramatic. Just add the word and fucking move on.

[Qbmax32]

based

[Super Aggro Crag]

word filter when a terry player logs in and touches his keyboard

[bastardblaster]

this literally Homage to Catalonia by george owell!!

[chesse20]

Wow, I can sum up my thoughts in one image:

► Show Spoiler

[oranges]

can we wordfilter based

[Kryson]

Wait, wasn't this you explicitly ran on NOT doing?

[Super Aggro Crag]

can we wordfilter based

i will kill you where you stand

[bastardblaster]

Wait, wasn't this you explicitly ran on NOT doing?

>Expecting headmins to keep campaign promises