I’m sympathetic to this feeling; I know I’ve complained about wordfilters myself in other circumstances. However, I think several points need to be observed:
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These wordfilters are not a serious attempt at moderation. They are “play”, a sort of ad-hoc joking game that emerged organically from the conversation in the Pictures Reconsidered thread and now confined to this dedicated space (with some obvious spillover into unrelated conversations, but this is a temporary byproduct. The neighbors are being noisy, but we’ll quiet down.). An implicit part of the game is in exploring the boundaries of interaction, i.e. testing to see what has been modified, but consider:
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While we do not currently employ wordfilters for moderating purposes, we DO censor a small number of offensive terms. We also have a very short list of terms that automatically flag a post for moderator review based on the behavior of historic bad actors. Since providing the details of such a list would undermine its effectiveness, and since I’d rather not pit users against mods in a competition to find the most obscure slurs possible, I’m comfortable confirming that the wordfilters currently in effect are all relatively benign, or so pointlessly specific as to be irrelevant.
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Addressing @Rudie’s point, “all these little jokes by the mods” is something of a misunderstanding based in the ambiguity of the situation. There are only four wordfilters currently in effect—fewer than there were when I last commented. One is the suggestion from a non-mod that started this conversation; another is posted earlier in this same conversation. They are jokes, though, and therefore they are not a permanent feature of this site. If you cannot endure their presence, then let me remind you:
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As both I and others pointed out up-thread, literally every wordfilter can be circumvented with determination. If (for some hypothetical godforsaken reason) I want to type “fap” without having it turn into “engage in Diogenesian praxis”, all I need to do is insert a zero-width joiner character in the middle of the word like so:
f&zwp;ap
- Don’t use this technique to post slurs that the censors won’t block.
I think that’s everything I wanted to say. Is there anybody whose mood I haven’t rained on? Let me know.
