By looking at the 20 votes!

Probably 4/10 people who voted YES, Have been a vicitm or abuse that keeps on coming to them via chat/e-mail/graal/pms/forums.

And I wonder how many of the 10 that voted NO, Themselves are the cause of this problem. I'd be willing to be on atleast 5-6.

It doesn't matter what the players say.
It's in the terms of agreement that you cannot use vulgar language.
It's sad that a swear filter has to be implemented to stop people from swearing though.

I agree , although I find the sexual content on all the PWs online more of a distrubing trend than the swearing. It has always been there but in the past 6 months it has been steadly getting worse. If the trend continues Graal will have to be reclassified as Adult Theme no one under 17 can play. :megaeek: :(

But Alex is only 16. :(

Anyway harrasment of any kind should warrant a temp ban and if it continues after their unbanning a permanent ban.

If I ran a server or a game I wouldn't want people like that playing it so banning them would be no problem. I'm sure no-one wants people like them playing.

I sure dont want anyone like that playing, they ruin the game. And it is very sad a filter seems to be the only way to get rid of the language problem.

Why stop at just censoring swear words then? Why not censor all words liable to offend someone.

People can be just as offended at an insult with swear words, as one without.

Yes but swear words offend people alot more. And they arent words you would say all the time infront of your teacher for e.g. Because people get offeneded by it. (They should just remake the meanings for swear words)

Censoring swear words encourages people to use witty insults :)

Maybe, but alteast the main words that offend people will be taken out.

Not to mention, opposing this is pretty much admitting that you break the profanity rule ;)

*gasp*
NO! Don't make some poor juvenile punk wet his pants trying to use his brain for a change!!! (Mommy! Graal's being mean to me again!)

I'm glad we don't have a sarcasm filter. :D

You'd better ;)

Well, I suppose it's possible to say that things like "Damn, WTF, WTS, WTH etc..." aren't offensive since they aren't directed towards a person, but still...

No they arent offensive. What im saying is, if you wouldnt stand up in asembly and say it infront of your principle then dont say it in graal. And for those who would say anything, Dont! Its breaking rules, and its moraly wrong so we may as well stop it.

Yeah, generally (I guess) but still... if someone keeps massing and using contractions or any other form of profanity every other word, I generally ignore them. Not from taking offense, but because I hate listening to idiots. If someone finds unusual, creative, and/or humorous ways of saying the same thing, I normally find it more acceptable (even if there is profanity in the phrase). Because then at least you're showing intelligence.

I am for a more brutal solution. Filters will always be by-passed.

This is my idea:

• PMs
  When you are sending a PM with a bad word the word will not be removed, but all your posts during this online session will be logged on the server and you get "swear points" depending on the word you used.
  
  As soon as you reached a certain ammount of points (mass-PMs will get you a lot of points!) you are banned from sending PMs and something like a global police will check every PM of you saved on the server. They will decide to enable PMs for you again or even to ban you completly.
  
  I was writing that the words should not be filtered out, because then the people will try to find out how the filter works, which words it knows, etc.
  
• Mass-PMs / toalls
  Those can cause a greater damage, and so they should be filtered out completly when they are containing an insulting word. You are banned from writing Mass-PMs and toalls imediatly until one of the global "Chat Police" members enables it for you again.
  
• Banning / Chat Police
  When I am speaking of this I mean global banning (chat-only, or from the whole game). The police should be global because sometimes playerworlds might be afraid to ban because their playercount would drop.
  
• Protocol of the chat
  Toalls and Mass-PMs should always be saved on the server.
  PMs to a single person are saved, but unless you used a bad word they will be deleted after you logged off - not for privacy but for storage reasons.
  If you complain about privacy you can use e-mails and programs like PGP. You don't need privacy on Graal.
  
• Trial-Accounts
  Since the players are risking no money for Trial-Accounts we need to be stricter here - the rules I wrote for mass messages would aply for single PMs, too. The police will not check you, so you will be chat-banned forever (or until you pay - then the police will check you).
  
• Recognising of bad words
  We need a better way to recognise words than just looking for some words in the database.
  Spaces and special characters would be removed, before checking for words. Some letters of other languages would be reduced to the simple latin letters: ÖöÜüÄä -> OoUuAa.
  Yes, removing special chars/spaces can cause wrong hits, but you are only banned from chatting (you can still play) and the chat-police should unban you soon.

That's just "filter+punishment", it's as easy to bypass as just "filter".

Players of graal should have some privacy in their private messages

Nice layout and thought out BUT it bypasses the responsiblity of the Manager and Staff of each Player World , who are the ones responsible for regulating this kind of behavior.It also creates more work on Stefan and Unixmad not to say giving more headaches by adding more Global RCs which in turn they also will have to be monitored for abuse. There is a simple solution to all this and requires nothing more nor anymore Staff , this is to crack down on Playerworlds who do not enforce Graal rules.If a PlayerWorld cannot control the Players from violating Graal rules and no Manager can be found to run it as it should be , then the Player World has to be taken down, removed from the Graal Community for the good of the Community. This MUST be done on ALL PlayerWorlds not just a few or the problem will persist.

All PlayerWorlds need to have the server rules reviewed to make sure they are using the Graal Rules and not some modified version of them. The Rules also need to be posted on their website for public access for all players of that PlayerWorld or anyone thinking of playing it. All Staff rules also need to be posted there and reviewed by Nemesis and his Staff for compliance to the Graal Rules. Standardizing of rights need to be established for ALL PlayerWorld Staff. Too many times PlayerWorlds have Staff that have rights they have no business with (ie FAQ with jailing and banning rights etc..) Admins with the same rights as the Managers , this will only cause problems for the server. NO ONE except the Managers should have all rights to any server rights like serveroptions, edit folder rights , folder config, change rights, change Staff accounts , these rights should be reserved for Managers ONLY . These are the rights that control the entire server which he/she are responsible for.These are things that should have been addressed long ago and something I have already been talking to Unixmad to some degree and I will continue to do so.

No. If you get the PM "You ****ing *****!!!" you know the words it removed (when two players are working as team to bypass the filter).

My idea was that normal PMs won't be filtered, so you can read the insult (and inform the GP). But the person who sent it will get insult points. He won't notice it until he got too much and so he can't test the filter.

Mass-PMs / toalls will be filtered completly, so other players won't even notice it.

Of course three players could still test it. One player is sending a "mass"-PM to two people and asks them whether it was successfull in the next PM.
This could be solved by declaring a minimum limit. (Eg.: you need 5 players to see the filter for mass-messages).

Why? And the messages are only logged when they contained a swearing word. If you really want privacy use PGP or something similiar.

Yes, you are right. My idea could just be changed to work locally.

We tried a swear filter on Npulse and all we got was grief from the players over it. They also tried to overload the NPC server with continuously cursing in PMs to get the NPC Server to filter it and found great amusement in it. The overload never worked of course but the grief of us putting it on did, so we removed it. :\

Words?
 

I say we shouldn't care because they are just words. Not like it is some evil spell that will set people on fire. I know you guys want to have it because you do not want little kids to see the words, but they will learn them anyways. Also half the time the little ones use profanity more than the older ones.

I think graal should be rated by ESRB.
That would solve a lot of problems, but it may be rated like Mature due to the content that comes up at times.
Life for instance, Moon Goddess showed me a screenshot from UN of people that had detailed naked bodies. I was like OMG.

No, it's still easily bypassed by things like weird characters, spaces, <i></i> (A lot of idiots haven't bothered to disable HTML), etc...

And if you think you can't live without swearing, you need to pay a visit to this site.

I didnt read this whole post because it is kind of stupid...


just make a filter to filter out bad words everywhere... pm's mass message... player window

final solution.... if people put periods or whatever sly trick to curse... oh well... that is what gp's are for....

this topic shouldnt even be so questionable.... its simple... I dont see why it would matter if some people tried to cuss... they do it on my forums all the time... they get warnings and they usually stop...

you have to think about it this way... dont imediatly think about jailing/banning when somethin happens like swearing or what not... just calmly and politely ask m to not swear if they persist... then a jail/ban is in order...

the thing is, if you say it nicely in a non threatening manner most people will comply and say alright sorry
you guys should read articles about moderating forums because those moderating rules could apply in game and other places

<advertisement removed by Kaimetsu>

Clever signature you got there. You think that doesn't encourage sexual behavior on graal or on the forums? I think your wrong. I have met plenty of players 12-13 year old girls who go around calling themselves "f" bunnies. preteding to do it in game around other players. I've even seen staff upload obscene gani's of sexual acts... in my opinion that's cause for perminent ban.


BTW: democracy isn't always the answer. 50% are the one's swearing 25% don't care. leaving only 25% against it.

yes, no stop cussing, yes stop sexual and racial slurs. kthxbai.

LOL FU LOL?!

Maybe someone already posted something like this, but I'm not about to read every post on 5 pages.

There should be a swear filter.

No, it doesn't matter if you don't want one.

You clicked the little agree button under that contract when you joined. It says you can't harass or abuse other people.

Swearing in most cases is harassing.


Honestly, you people can be *****s when you go 'OMG LIEK WTF I WANNA BE ABLE TO SWEAR THATS DUMB JUST DON'T READ WHAT I PM TO YOU 10000000 TIMES'

Can't it get through your thick heads that you agreed not to, already?

I think hard core words should be cut out, but some of the mild ones should be allowed

The first post said what you said. If you dont want to read 4 pages (Fair Enough) atleast read the first few on firstpage, and couple on last!

Filters? Geez, filters will just be let aside, just a useless side option in Graal, heck, I guess people will just make fun of it, have a few laughs and go on. Instead of saying ****, they could say ****, and similiar things, so it should be quite easy to pass through, plus, it's really just waste , it is not a serious issue, is it? We already have rules for it, why so harshly strengthen them?

Yes you said it your self. **** is offensive *** is not. Its just a word sounding and nearly looking the same but its self has no meaning. And why enforce the rules? Maybe as everyone is breaking them? And rules are rules, as well as everone agreed not to. And it is serious, considering Moongoddess quit Managments due to sexual and offensive words constantly being said to her. So I'd say it was.

Yes, as Kaimetsu said, it's not nearly as offensive when you have to spend 5 seconds decoding what the word is.

what is the purpose of having rules if you're not going to enforce them?

What I meant was that swearing in PM's or so towards someone (for example "**** YOU" is directed towards the reciever) is a thing we must stop (and we're already doing that, in my opinon) but **** is not directed specificially, so why is there a need to stop that too? If I were to say like "**** you you're a ****ing *** piece of ****" to someone, I would most likely recieve a warning from a GP if proven, so that, in my opinion, takes care of the directed swearing issues, but what about the non - directed ones? Is it worth implementing a system because of it? Or maybe the warning system has its flaws?

Warning system is terrible, we'd have people getting banned for saying things like roo***p, assume, etc...

But a censor is good.

Try and censour this

<Okay, I will - Kaimetsu>

An example of how easy the censour could be avoided, and it's not like you're gonna censour every possible way to make out the word, because there's too many of them

ass
4ss
azz
4zz
/-\ss
/-\zz

and so on..

Again, like Kaimetsu said, profanity is less effective when you have to decipher it to read it.

The if they do avoid the censor you ban the retards.

<3

Doesn't that just take us back to part 1? Part 1 being the current rules about the swearing issues. If people wants to talk with profanities, they'll just avoid the filter, and it will do nothing other than making people having to change a few letters in the swear, so unless this filter is going to contain more than just the plain word, it's capacitiy would greatly decrease.

How about this, *!*!*!*!*!*!*! (sorry for that, just for show)

There are other ways to accomplish those kinda things

*.**.***.* (yet again, sorry..)

There's another example.

Bottom line : Unless this filter will go all the way (by overseeing such patterns and such) , it wouldn't be as usefull as it could be.

ADDED : Also, how about slangs/names that contain profanities?such as :

wASSup = w***up
Assure = ***ure <-- that one could probably be misunderstood.

etc. etc.