Name censorship filter?

hi all. I encountered a mishap with pups named in a forum auction; the user was unaware that “raccoon” shortened a certain way is a slur, and changed it after I let them know. this wasn’t a word that could have applied to me, but seeing it jarred me and made me realize there’s not exactly a filter for names (or if there is, it didn’t catch this one.)

I can’t say how effectively one could code something like that, since it could catch words that contain the same combination of letters (i.e. Pokemon games catch words like “basement” for this reason). I think it could be effective, though, especially if it could prevent mistakes like that from happening.

thanks for reading.

Censorship filters are finicky things that rarely work quite as hoped or expected, and open up a can of worms as to what should be filtered. Personally I'd prefer people just report potentially offensive names, etc. to the staff.

I do agree that certain words should be filtered, which I'm of course not going to say here. But like Coal said censorship can be hard to apply. Especially if common words contain the bad word itself and then get censored. Also like in your example people just might not even know something is a slur. 

I understand your worry and where you are coming from, but I do think it's better to just be left for people to report offensive names. 

I don't exactly believe that censoring the words would really help either. People who want to use those we words for one reason or another would just use spaces between the words or twist the word slightly. I have seen both happen a lot in video games.

Yeah, just applying a blanket censorship would probably wind up producing the Scunthorpe Effect, and then there’s the issue of how many different words do you add to the filter...

Is there a 'report name' button on wolf pages? If not, then maybe bring it in, then maybe if it's flagged the user can't change it until it's been reviewed?

Yeah, what Kahvinporo said - if people want to have unpleasant names they'll always find a way around it. Automatic censorship really doesn't work well.

There is no way to report a wolf from its profile, but in modbox you can report offensive/inappropriate name.

I was mistaken :''DDD but you can also do wolf name report in modbox.

@Kahvinporo

You can report a wolf from their own page. Little red button on the bottom left of the page

I understand were you are coming from but i would think report the wolf button would solve this, if the player is hostile or unreasonable. It sounds like the player you spoke to just didn't understand and it was able to be resolved :)

I am British and know from the past some very normal words I use are picked up by a censorship which are in no way a slur/insult etc so could be tricky for a censorship to work.

I would add that with an international audience where English is maybe their second or third language, it might not even be malicious or obvious to them; as you said the user wasn't aware of it. (I still don't know how you shorten raccoon into a slur.)

I agree with the others that Modbox seems a better solution for now.

@Sienna Snow i will send you a PM to explain incase I offend anyone :)