Question What are the rules for censor bypass?

Started by Stratos99 October 20th, 2010 3:18 PM
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Timbjerr

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The rule is simple. If it's on PC's word filter, let PC render it as ****. Trying to get around it by editing your post to say d**n or h3ll or something along those lines is against the rules.

As to the moderator you witnessed doing it, I'd have to ask him/her about it, and maybe go over their heads to the H-staff if it offended you or something. :/

Sydian

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It also depends on the mod who sees it. For instance, if I see a **** in a post in the context that the f-bomb would be used it, I warn/infract for it. I consider that all as trying to bypass the censor, and when it's 4 *'s, one can only assume the worst of the swears.

About that staffer that used it, you could report them. :/ I don't know who did do it though, but yeah. You might wanna bring that into higher staff attention. It's not a major offense, but it's still weird to see moderators breaking the rules that they enforce.
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FreakyLocz14

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I just got infracted for that not too long ago. So be careful that your posts are at least 4 words and 25 characters unless you are in an area that specifically exempts your from that rule. And as I learned the hard way, the words in links don't count towards the 4 word limit.

And it clearly says that "changing a part of a swear word so that the word isn't filtered but the original word is implied" is against the rules.
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It's not a major offense, but it's still weird to see moderators breaking the rules that they enforce.
i agree. i was infracted by the moderator stratos is speaking of for censor bypassing on vms, and this same moderator is publishing the 's' word in a thread (which obviously gets more exposure than VMs in someone's profile). i don't have a problem with the 'offense' itself, but the hypocrisy seems a little unfair :I

professor plum

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It also depends on the mod who sees it. For instance, if I see a **** in a post in the context that the f-bomb would be used it, I warn/infract for it. I consider that all as trying to bypass the censor, and when it's 4 *'s, one can only assume the worst of the swears.

About that staffer that used it, you could report them. :/ I don't know who did do it though, but yeah. You might wanna bring that into higher staff attention. It's not a major offense, but it's still weird to see moderators breaking the rules that they enforce.
oO; I always assumed that if it was completely censored by the filter, then . . no bypass occurred. I mean, that's what we have it for. Why would you warn/infract for that? I mean, it seems kind of redundant. I mean, tsk tsk, they used the bad word, but it was filtered and therefore censored. It's not that big of a deal to where that would deserve a warning/infraction . . . albeit, it really depends on the context.
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Sydian

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oO; I always assumed that if it was completely censored by the filter, then . . no bypass occurred. I mean, that's what we have it for. Why would you warn/infract for that? I mean, it seems kind of redundant. I mean, tsk tsk, they used the bad word, but it was filtered and therefore censored. It's not that big of a deal to where that would deserve a warning/infraction . . . albeit, it really depends on the context.
Not every offense I see for it do I infract, and it's only when it's in the context of being one of the more naughty words, like F or S. And usually when I see it, people think they're being clever by having the first letter of the word followed by *'s.
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Melody

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I'll have to agree with Erik there...it's too harsh to warn or infract if the user lets the censors do it's job and leave the word bleeped out fully as asterisks. If Steve really intended to hide the word being used, he would have used a fixed length censor for each word (such as <censored> or something similar) As such...if you do not circumvent the censor to make the original word obvious, then it is no issue unless your post is obviously laced with little 4&5 asterisk words with context that strongly suggests you're cussing someone out or using the words in a blatantly insulting manner.

Swearing as a means to express intense emotion is not uncommon, and should not be punished. The censor bypass rule is there to protect the censors and save Steve from having to play 20 questions by guessing every possible variant of a word that could be used to bypass the censor. Still, if the context of the word is not insulting, is it really necessary to go beyond an official or verbal warning?
(Obviously pardoning the repeat offender from this protection)

Sydian

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I'll have to agree with Erik there...it's too harsh to warn or infract if the user lets the censors do it's job and leave the word bleeped out fully as asterisks. If Steve really intended to hide the word being used, he would have used a fixed length censor for each word (such as <censored> or something similar) As such...if you do not circumvent the censor to make the original word obvious, then it is no issue unless your post is obviously laced with little 4&5 asterisk words with context that strongly suggests you're cussing someone out or using the words in a blatantly insulting manner.
Go back and read my other post, dude. I don't infract as much as I do warn. A warning for swearing is not bad at all, especially since half the time, I'm just saying "hey man chill" without even using the infraction type warnings. And the swears I usually run into are in those "lol this generation sucks" thread and people are just constantly flaming. Granted, that thread was just closed because of the nonsense. But I digress!

Swearing as a means to express intense emotion is not uncommon, and should not be punished. The censor bypass rule is there to protect the censors and save Steve from having to play 20 questions by guessing every possible variant of a word that could be used to bypass the censor. Still, if the context of the word is not insulting, is it really necessary to go beyond an official or verbal warning?
(Obviously pardoning the repeat offender from this protection)
It's still something not everyone wants to read/see/etc. There aren't just a bunch of people that are 15+ years of age here. I have seen people running around sporting a nice 8 or 9 years as their age. Lying or not, it should still be considered. And we don't know what they hear at home either. Why should we be the first to drop all the swears on them? And then there's those that are offended by such words.
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Sora's Nobody

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What about only infracting swears which are addressed at somebody? I mean anybody can want to let off some steam once in a while. And so long as it isnt meant to be mean to anybody. I mean i see some words which should be censored, But i mean a word like <censored 4-letter word> is as common and accepted in ALOT of country's as Door or Car.

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Nick

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Swearing as a means to express intense emotion is not uncommon, and should not be punished. The censor bypass rule is there to protect the censors and save Steve from having to play 20 questions by guessing every possible variant of a word that could be used to bypass the censor. Still, if the context of the word is not insulting, is it really necessary to go beyond an official or verbal warning?
(Obviously pardoning the repeat offender from this protection)
I agree. The actual rule itself... there's a gray line between what's okay and what isn't - one that I think should be filled, but it's entirely too difficult to do so.

The way people handle this one is entirely different than others. Whenever I see asterisks, I don't do anything unless it's aimed at someone in a degrading manner. If people use it, as you said, to express emotion, and aren't aiming it at anyone, to me it's not that big of a deal. I've always looked at that rule as... if someone actually attempts to bypass it and, like Sydian said, wants to be clever and put the first letter of the word in there - regardless of the context used, they bypassed the censor. That's what the infraction for, in my opinion. The censor's there for a reason. As long as it's censored and not used in an offensive manner, I don't care if people curse. I don't think people should be punished for doing so, either. Not unless it's offensive and disrespectful to a person.

Buuut, since different staff members handle it differently - some infract even with the censor - I'd be very careful... I mean, you can already see a difference in handling it already from just reading this thread.

Melody

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That's why I'm not particularly pleased with that. There really ought to be a uniform rule for staff to enforce...and I really think that infracting the user if they did not bypass the censors, an infraction is just draconian and abusive.
(obviously this doesn't apply to common-sense infractions because the post is just littered with 4&5 asterisk words or is otherwise flamebating...but for one word it is inappropriate to infract.)

Archer

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Posted January 5th, 2020
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Buuut, since different staff members handle it differently - some infract even with the censor - I'd be very careful... I mean, you can already see a difference in handling it already from just reading this thread.
That's an issue that I think needs to be looked into. I'm not suggesting what should be done either way, but it needs to be consistent, nevertheless.

That said,I think it's important to get an idea of what the general community thinks for the staff to take into account, so: I don't like the idea of infractions when a word is starred out. Providing the user doesn't try to bypass the censor or swear excessively, I think the censor serves its purpose.

Going against the idea of consistency, it may actually depend more on the section than the staff member, purely due to the respective audience. I think that swearing in "younger" sections, such as B/W, is totally inappropriate. On the other hand, in Strategies and Movesets or the Computers and Technology, people can let fly without offending anyone, because the average user is a lot older. I'm not justifying it, by any means.

tl;dr version: I don't think starred out words should be infracted, assuming there is no bypassing.

Nick

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Going against the idea of consistency, it may actually depend more on the section than the staff member, purely due to the respective audience. I think that swearing in "younger" sections, such as B/W, is totally inappropriate. On the other hand, in Strategies and Movesets or the Computers and Technology, people can let fly without offending anyone, because the average user is a lot older. I'm not justifying it, by any means.
I don't think sections should determine the level of severity swearing serves. Regulars may be an older age in more seemingly mature forums, but young users still browse those forums as well as young guests. That should be taken into account for the entire community.

But I do agree that some consistency within the actions taken by the staff against matters like that should be established.
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Posted October 21st, 2011
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I agree. The actual rule itself... there's a gray line between what's okay and what isn't - one that I think should be filled, but it's entirely too difficult to do so.

The way people handle this one is entirely different than others. Whenever I see asterisks, I don't do anything unless it's aimed at someone in a degrading manner. If people use it, as you said, to express emotion, and aren't aiming it at anyone, to me it's not that big of a deal. I've always looked at that rule as... if someone actually attempts to bypass it and, like Sydian said, wants to be clever and put the first letter of the word in there - regardless of the context used, they bypassed the censor. That's what the infraction for, in my opinion. The censor's there for a reason. As long as it's censored and not used in an offensive manner, I don't care if people curse. I don't think people should be punished for doing so, either. Not unless it's offensive and disrespectful to a person.
was this an accident or did you go out of your way to break the rules you enforce?

don't view spoiler below if you're sensitive to profanity.
Spoiler:


this particularly irks me because i was infracted by you for using a word some people may be sensitive to. if your judgment entirely depends on context, my infraction is unjustified.

i'm in full agreement with Pachy, i don't think this issue has that much grey area, there's either a cuss-word there or there's not and if someone's not literally bypassing censors, they're not breaking those rules...i see no reason grounds for dealing with cuss words can't be agreed on so it's handled fairly. being generally disrespectful, cuss words or not, is a different matter and i can see the subjectivity in handling that sort of thing.

Nick

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Posted July 28th, 2021
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this particularly irks me because i was infracted by you for using a word some people may be sensitive to. if your judgment entirely depends on context, my infraction is unjustified.
Infracting someone for calling someone else the c word isn't an unjustified infraction.
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Posted October 21st, 2011
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Infracting someone for calling someone else the c word isn't an unjustified infraction.
there was no context. i didn't call anyone anything, for all you know i was simply referring to the noun. it was in good fun, i meant no disrespect to the person i was talking to and they were not offended.

this is why

i'm in full agreement with Pachy, i don't think this issue has that much grey area, there's either a cuss-word there or there's not and if someone's not literally bypassing censors, they're not breaking those rules...i see no reason grounds for dealing with cuss words can't be agreed on so it's handled fairly. being generally disrespectful, cuss words or not, is a different matter and i can see the subjectivity in handling that sort of thing.
and this should apply to staff as well. im not trying to justify my using profanity. in fact, i believe i deserved that infraction because i broke the rules- i'm just promoting fairness in handling the situation, and this is definitely not the first time i've seen staff censor-bypass on the forum.

Platinum Lucario

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Stratos99, unfortunately there is no way of getting past the filters, if any moderator caught you trying to bypass the censors, they would indeed warn or infract you. And if Moderators are able to do it... then it could be possible that the censoring doesn't apply to the usergroups that are staff, because they probably have to explain to the members.

Even though I assume alot of people at any age are either sensitive or used to swearing, so I've heard that some Moderators have been infracting people for just swearing when it's actually censored out, sounds pretty unfair, doesn't it eh?

Some of the younger aged kids that come on The PokéCommunity Forums really don't mind any of the swearing on the forum, however... from my experience... I've realized that it's only their parents that get offended by it, and in which the child also gets sensitive to the words as well.

So I'd have to say... as long as the words are censored... I'm sure it would be unnessisary for Moderators to infract users just for a "censor bypass" because it isn't breaking the rules at all.

I'm now beginning to think... what if we had a feature people could turn on in their User CP that would censor out words? Or even be able to display the censored words?
Wouldn't that be a good idea? Then I'm sure alot of people would be able to choose if they wish to hide the innopropiate words or not.
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I'm now beginning to think... what if we had a feature people could turn on in their User CP that would censor out words? Or even be able to display the censored words?
Wouldn't that be a good idea? Then I'm sure alot of people would be able to choose if they wish to hide the innopropiate words or not.
urrrm this would be a reasonable idea since profanity isn't inherently derogatory so not everyone takes offense but there will always be people who do take offense despite the context. (but only if by default cuss words were censored, i can see guests and new members determining whether or not they want to join/stay, seeing profanity all over the place because they're unaware of the settings may repel them.) still complications would arise, people posting pictures bypassing the censors (which warranted my infraction teehee) and penalty would depend on personal judgment of whichever staff member sees it first, it'd be difficult to implement a solid/fair rule that caters to both people who don't mind profanity and people who take offense to it.

but expletives are not necessary to use to get your point across in discussion, so i say if you don't mind them then use them in private and not on a public forum.

Nick

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I think that's the main problem. What's offensive to one person may not be offensive to the next, and I'm sure if cursing as a whole was banned completely that would likely cause a few problems here and there for the people who don't have any problem with cursing.

The idea to make the censorship of curse words user set seems logical at first, but thinking about all the side effects from it make it really difficult to really deal with. I think that's the main reason there isn't a real set way to deal with it because even with staff members things are dealt with in different ways because of that. Especially with the fact that how serious of a rule the staff member considers the rule to be determines how they act on it a great deal. I mean, there are a lot of forum-specific rules that are enforced that I don't really agree with being punishable (ex: in the RP forum, there's an infraction for a post being too short) so it's hard for me to just infract a user for doing something I don't myself consider to be serious.
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I'm sure if cursing as a whole was banned completely that would likely cause a few problems here and there for the people who don't have any problem with cursing.
It already is; quoth the rules: It is not permitted to swear on the community
And it mentions no permissible context.

Nick

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It already is; quoth the rules: It is not permitted to swear on the community
And it mentions no permissible context.
That brings about the typical "so and so isn't a curse word!" argument. I've read a few threads in the HQ, and even some higher higher staff members have a hard time deciding if a word should count as a swear or not. There are some words that are censored that make me o___O because I never considered them to be a swear word beforehand.

Platinum Lucario

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It already is; quoth the rules: It is not permitted to swear on the community
And it mentions no permissible context.
Indeed there is, but we're actually talking about how they infract users even if the word is censored and the person didn't bypass it.

Which would indeed... feel unfair.
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