You got to be kidding me lol

Not at all! Just ask around on other "professional" games. I'm sure they also have things like "sausage" and "apple" on their lists. They are rude, dude!

Requesting "tea" and "crumpet" is also added to this list as I am frequently verbally attacked for my englishness.

See my signature for example.

requesting a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y, and z be added to the filter because these letters are in the words people use to verbally attack me. Also all ASCII characters because I find them particularly offensive.

Requesting all words be removed from the list because I have yet to see a law passed stating which words are "bad" and shouldn't be spoken. This could extend into real life as well because I'm tired of some programs bleeping out the f word but not "damn" and other stuff.

Seriously, where exactly is the line? Different places draw the line after different words (if at all) and its pretty ****ing retarded. What ever happened to freedom of speech? I think there's a clause in there saying "you can say anything as long as it doesn't offend people" or something; but different things are offensive to some and not to others, so that theory really doesn't work at all.

Until there's an offical legal statement saying which words are acceptable or not, I don't feel its acceptable for any program/website/tv station/video/etc. to prohibit use of certain words. Don't use age as an excuse because there are plenty of worse things for underage kids to see/do than say "damn".

Hell half the words that get censored are in the bible, which billions of people have seemingly followed mindlessly.

Theres my rant. I just want to be able to say '**** you' without it getting bleeped out.

it doesnt get bleeped out glad it just gets logged, I think mostly for the people who spam it, or people that use racial slurs and not who casually use a profanity. I think stryker is very lax on profanity on classic

True statement. Both Masterstorm and Stryker feel that unless its getting out of hand or insulting/harassing another player its acceptable. If they jailed/banned for every 'bad' word, the entire group involved in a CTF would end up in jail after the event. Saying that though its not really necessary to drop the f bomb every other word either. It makes people look like they're too stupid to figure out a better word to use.

sir you have yet to answer my question

Just to reiterate what Bell said, but I'm fairly relaxed on swearing. The way I see it is that if no-one is offended by what you are saying, then there's no reason for me to punish it. Pretty much the most you'll get from me is the occasional gagging.

You say yourself that different words are offensive to different people, and this is exactly why we don't publish a list of banned words. I'm pretty sure there are words you use frequently amongst your friends, but wouldn't dare think of saying in front of your grandmother. When you're swearing on the overworld or in mass messages, everyone can see the words you type, even those not involved in the conversation. That's where you are most at risk of offending people. Different words can also be offensive to different people at different times. I'll use the old example of 'lollin@pic!', which in itself is not offensive at all, but at the time was being used deliberately to upset some players.

It's a pretty easy rule to follow in general: if someone is offended by what you say, apologize and stop saying it. For the most part it's not the words you use, but the way you use them that is offensive.

Regarding the logging, the system logs chat based on a set of words which we think could be offensive to the majority of people. The logs generated are only to be used when a complaint is made and no-one was online to check the incident out. It is not there for us to just trawl through and punish people on our own whim. I know many of you have concerns that we are logging a lot of legitimate chat, and this is something I'm looking at. I can already think of some easy adjustments that will bring the number of false positives down dramatically. Eventually, it would be nice to drop the logging altogether. ^^

It's worth noting that while I'm lax on profanity I've also been given permission to place a swear filter on the server if necessary. I'd rather not hinder the playercount by jailing/banning people and some are taking advantage of this. If I have to eliminate swearing to keep people on the server I will.

You know as well as I do, that a swear filter would eliminate a lot of more players than it would even brign in.

What the hell? No one even mentioned the filter or swearing even being an issue in itself. What I addressed was administrators (namely Thor) being able to look at logs willy nilly, whenever they felt in the mood for having a browse through what people talk about. The issue with the filter was the amount of words that it picked up aside from swearing.

I think I allieviated some of that by removing ass.
Thus removing classic getting logged, and only a much much smaller, more relevant list remains. I bet the log is less than half the volume it was before.

So how many words are left?

Like 25. Out of like 200/300 that it was before.

Which is why there isn't one now. A last resort is a last resort.

The logs are used to see what we usually can not as staff can't be everywhere. Any other use places the staff using the log in the wrong.

Is there really any need to be logging 25 different words? I don't see the purpose in it, especially since you have the tool that displays people swearing in real time. You've just said that you're "lax on profanity" so why is it necessary to log this stuff every single time it is said?

How is it a resort, when the effect it will have will be overwhelmingly negative?
You could put in a togglable filter to give people options, but saying eliminate makes it sound permanent

The log is there so I can go back and verify any complaints I get while I'm not online. The real time swear display is there for when I am on and saves me time having to check a log.

"Lax on profanity" does not mean "Totally ignorant to". Some things are acceptable, some are not.

I never said in what manner a filter would be place so any theory on how it would affect player count is purely speculation. Mass messages have been crossing the line lately and that's our concern for filtering.

Complaints for what though, swearing? I don't think I've ever seen people getting punished for swearing that was done a couple of days before the complaint, only in the case for members of staff. There's a conflict of interest here. You're saying you're lax on profanity, but there are logs so you can go back and jail people for using it? I can understand racism, but I don't even think I can name 5 racial slurs.

I'm just going by the words you have used. Eliminating sounds like a permanant blocking of profanity.
Yes I know masses are getting ridiculous, however filtering it out completely will enrage a lot of casual swearers, such as myself.
I don't like seeing asteriks any more than I like watching an R rated moved on a network that uses the heavily editted PG version.

I was going for the extreme case to make a point. I don't think I'd ever have to completely filter everything.

Whenever I look at the logs I have two things on my mind:

1) Staff swearing. There's a finer line for staff than players.
2) Anything that supports a complaint. Simple swear words aren't the only thing that are logged. Words commonly used during harassment (be it racism or sexual) are logged as well.

In that case guild messages don't need to be included in the log and it can be scripted for them to be ignored.

The logs aren't checked unless a complaint is made. If a guild member is complaining about a toguild then I need to see it, otherwise I'd never know about it.

Honestly the situation has never come up.

Guild messages are supposed to have the same level of privacy as private messages do, so they shouldn't really be picked up by the swear logger, because it is picking up a lot of text that is clearly not viable for jail time, most of it is discussion between friends. I don't think I've ever seen a toguild that has lead to the jailing of someone in any guild I've been in. At best, the player who made the toguild would be removed from the guild. I know that some admins have spied on some of our guild messages through the chat logs and if it has never been an issue after 4 years, they shouldn't really be placed in the filter.

In light of this, it would be nice to have your permission for toguilds to be removed from the filter.

Relaxed? You don't even allow crap to be said without trying to scold someone for saying it.

So Staff can't generally swear at all without getting **** from you? Sounds a bit like a dictatorship here especially when you should not care so much for other staff fields as their respective admin or the manager should. (If what is said stays out of harassment.)

I would not do that. In events themselves, people are teamed with other people who may just be foes on the same guild tag. Thus harassment occurs sometimes. And no, the GC can't always spot those.

Ah a valid point I didn't think of that, events tags such as Red Team, Blue Team, Babord Infantry, etc could and should be included however. These tags are a very small minority and they wouldn't pass for global guilds if someone attempted to make them, so there's no issue there, but it is good that you pointed it out.

That also brings up an interesting point. Perhaps the Game Coordinator team should receive a similar NPC to what the GPs have in order to track harassment in a more real time situation, as you're expected to deal with people acting up in events where it's not always possible. If the NPC showed what people were doing during the event levels in terms of swearing and harassment, you will have a more accurate way of tackling issues. A little off topic there but yeah.

Erm....whatever happened to freedom of speech?

Obviously harassment is not allowed and all, but how is recording swear words allowed? Excessive and/or spam swearing is not necessary, but the occasional "bad word" (w/e that means) doesn't need to be logged.

Most people use swear words to emphasize what they're feeling. Rather than say "well this sucks" they say "well this ****ing sucks". Would saying "well this really sucks" add the same emphasis to their statement? Probably. But I don't feel like staff should be monitoring certain words just b/c a few ppl dislike them.

Here's an example. During my senior year of high school, I had two "dual credit" classes where a college prof from the nearby community college would come and teach. One class had a complete ***** for a teacher (english) and she was completely anti-swear and had a strict set of rules for everything. Hell one time she failed me on a paper just b/c I had three swear words in it. However, my other teacher was almost the opposite. She'd swear in class and was pretty relaxed about everything. One time we moved class to a pizza place down the street.

Ironically I swore less in my gov class (cool teacher) than in my english class (***** teacher). I think that perhaps the more you harden the rules, the more people resist. Right now we're probably good as is. But do not ever put in a swear filter b/c I theorize that people will do anything and everything possible to get around it and/or fight it.

Honestly I don't like this monitoring or bleeping of any words at all. I want to be able to say what I feel; if that includes an occasional "swear word" then so be it. Words are just words. If people chose to be offended by them, that's their problem. If you call me a redneck, I will be disappointed on how uninformed and misguided you are, but I won't request that redneck is filtered or bleeped or anything. If you call me a short, slow white boy, I'll laugh b/c its true. Now if you call me a mother ****er or ***** or something, I won't be very happy with you; but although I might disagree with what they say, I'll defend to the death their right to say it without it being bleeped out.

It is my job to enforce the rules for anyone. I'm best equipped to catch people breaking the rules and that includes staff members. Yes, I do include the Admin of the division where I can, but that is not always possible. This should not give that staff member a free pass nor excuse them.

This is where your opinion differs from the reality of the rules

What are the rules made off of again? Someone's opinion? (smart ass remark)

What do the rules exactly say, btw? (question)

All I'm going to say is that it is incredibly easy to omit guild messages from the vulgar chat log, and also include guilds from events(i.e. Red Team) in the vulgar chat log, so event harassment gets recorded.

If Stryker gives the go ahead for you guys, I'll add that in, but its his department, his rules, and his call, ultimately.

the rules say **** off nerds

Oh. I'm offended.

/end sacrasm

I dont care, I can handle being harassed anyway, if anything whoever started it would it end calling the GP on me LOL.

If it's being abuse by the people who can view the logs, then obviously it's a problem, otherwise there's a rule against vulgar chat, let em enforce it.

your a nerd !!!!!