dont let people type swears in the editor

pinkieofthepies

simple really. currently you can type swears with the text tool in costumes, or you can type them in comments on the code.

Za-Chary

You have a great idea, but this would be tough to implement, with little progress made as a result.

Suppose that the word “cat” was a bad word. With your suggestion, the following would not be possible:

say [cat] for (2) secs

However, I am very certain that the following would be possible, and almost impossible to catch:

say [c] for (2) secs
say [a] for (2) secs
say [t] for (2) secs

You could also make a comment like this:

c———————-
—————a——–
————————t

Moreover, with paragraphs upon paragraphs sometimes used in comments, it would be annoying to try to figure out where a bad word might be written, especially with something like this sentence:

The scripts in this sprite manage the simulation of traffic at the city the user creates. It does this by…

Notice the word “cat” is sneakily placed, even though the sentence itself is not bad at all. Does it block this sentence? If so, it would be annoying to figure out what the cause of the block is, especially if you write paragraphs in your comments like I do sometimes. If not, then you could easily type “c at” at any time, and the system would not block it — hence the user gets away with writing “cat”.

The above problems could be present in the editor as well, with two very important other problems.

First of all, you could easily “draw” the word “cat” using the pen tool. The editor definitely would not catch this, and it would be impossible to make a system that catches this.

Second, the user could create a text box, and write “c”. Then they could create a second text box, write “a”, and put it next to “c”. Then they could create a third text box, write “t”, and put it next to “a”. The result would look like “cat” spelled out via text, and this would also be impossible to stop (unless the Scratch Team decides to prevent “c” from being typed, which is impractical).

Of course, everything I say could be easily solved with the Report button. But, so could the way things are now. I feel like not much progress would be made with this.

I hope this was constructive rather than hateful, and I'm sorry if it seemed like the latter.

Last edited by Za-Chary (Dec. 4, 2021 17:17:53)

pinkieofthepies

Za-Chary wrote:
Weak support.

You have a great idea, but I only say “weak support” because of how tough this would be to implement, with little progress made as a result.

Snip

I hope this was constructive rather than hateful, and I'm sorry if it seemed like the latter.

Ah, Za-chary, the mighty suggestion destroyer! I'm actually super glad you pointed out the flaws of this, because i didn't even notice them. Now that i think about it more it would be super hard to implement this, given the amount of “creative” work-arounds.

that was actually super constructive so don't worry about that haha. I've never looked at one of your posts and saw it as hateful.

space_elephant

Za-Chary wrote:
Weak support.

You have a great idea, but I only say “weak support” because of how tough this would be to implement, with little progress made as a result.

Suppose that the word “cat” was a bad word. With your suggestion, the following would not be possible:
say [cat] for (2) secs
However, I am very certain that the following would be possible, and almost impossible to catch:
say [c] for (2) secs
say [a] for (2) secs
say [t] for (2) secs
set[var v]to[]
set[var v]to(join(var)[c])
set[var v]to(join(var)[a])
set[var v]to(join(var)[t])
say(var)for(2)secs

LionHeart70

Not really sure how this could be implemented. I'm assuming that not allowing people to type swears in the editor also refers to not allowing users to draw inappropriate images in the paint editor.. which'd be nearly, if not fully, impossible. I feel like a lot of false positives could come up and in the rare case that this happens, I think the best course for now is to report any inappropriate content you see being used with the editor.

Sheep_maker

People would be less likely to try to circumvent the swear filter if its effects aren't immediate. Perhaps the primitive swear filter could be used, and when it detects something, it silently and automatically reports the project to the Scratch Team.

cheddargirl

Lol, that's actually one of our moderator “wish-list” items! We had thought about finding way to integrate the word filter into project text. The tricky part is dealing with false positives (example: “f u n n y”), or there are words that may or may not be okay depending on context and requires human review (example: “Discord”, which could be either the unmoderated chat app or Discord the MLP character). We'd have to likely adjust the word filter settings for projects, and that's been kind of a sticking point in figuring out how to do that effectively from a developer and moderation standpoint.

StrangeMagic32

cheddargirl wrote:
(example: “Discord”, which could be either the unmoderated chat app or Discord the MLP character)

Or discord, as in the definition xD
Wow, you know about Discord, The Lord of Chaos! :O

Master Post, I agree with the other points, it's a great idea, though hard to implement.

Last edited by StrangeMagic32 (Dec. 27, 2018 00:13:19)

PrincessPanda_test_

LionHeart70 wrote:
Not really sure how this could be implemented. I'm assuming that not allowing people to type swears in the editor also refers to not allowing users to draw inappropriate images in the paint editor.. which'd be nearly, if not fully, impossible. I feel like a lot of false positives could come up and in the rare case that this happens, I think the best course for now is to report any inappropriate content you see being used with the editor.

I agree!

LionHeart70

PrincessPanda_test_ wrote:
LionHeart70 wrote:
Not really sure how this could be implemented. I'm assuming that not allowing people to type swears in the editor also refers to not allowing users to draw inappropriate images in the paint editor.. which'd be nearly, if not fully, impossible. I feel like a lot of false positives could come up and in the rare case that this happens, I think the best course for now is to report any inappropriate content you see being used with the editor.
I agree!

Forgot to mention it'd also be like seeking swears/inappropriate phrases in the sound editor which'd be difficult and also possibly kind of irritating, especially if you're only planning to use the part of the audio without inappropriate language or are cutting the inappropriate language out.

mumu245

#2
I agree. It is impractical. Also, someone could load a bitmap image (or text-to-path vector) and it wouldn't be detected. I still think we should make it easier to report costumes.

ThatExplosivePigeon

There are many ways to circumvent this, but not being able to simply just put it in the say and/or input blocks would be useful. Too many workarounds and words that could be inappropriate in only the right circumstances limit my support of this.

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