Although the previous forum filter had several flaws, it did have one undeniable benefit that the current filter lacks: it would tell you what you said wrong. It would censor the exact word you said wrong, so you'd understand what you said that was bad.

With the new filter, there are people who keep asking why their forum post has “inappropriate language”. It's been fairly confusing lately.

My suggestion is that whenever you post an inappropriate comment, the filter will tell you it is inappropriate and will list the exact phrase that made it inappropriate in the first place.

For example:

Sorry, this post appears to include unsuitable language and will not be updated.

Here is/are the phrase(s) that led to this message: (…)

I know there is probably a suggestion for comment filters to tell you what you said wrong, but I don't want to merge topics, because this filter was put in place relatively recently and might be easier to fix than the comment filter. Also, the main site and the forums work vastly different from each other, so it might be a pain for the developers to do it all at once.

removed

Support, goodness god it's so annoying

Although I'd prefer any inappropriate words be censored after the post is made

ajskateboarder wrote:

Support, goodness god it's so annoying

Although I'd prefer any inappropriate words be censored after the post is made

Agreed, the new filter is annoying

Support, I'd love to have this implemented in comments too (seriously, it gets REALLY annoying!)

I suggested this a while back and it got shut down. The example given was that some young, innocent child would unknowingly type something that contains a bad word, see the word spelled out for them, and then bam, they know a new swear word now. I don't agree with it, but that was the end of my suggestion.

That being said, I still think some variation of it is a good idea, so I wholeheartedly support.

the filter made this not go through

“If you're talking about how people make really good thumbnail art. I would blur the background a bit, then have the main element in front, with the text, the text i use outline. and move it down a couple of times to make it look cool.”

EDIT: it was actually this:
https://cdn2(dot)scratch.mit.edu/ get_image/ gallery/ 34242772_1000x1000(dot)png
(remove spaces, and change “(dot)” to a period

Interstellar-TV wrote:

(#6)
The example given was that some young, innocent child would unknowingly type something that contains a bad word, see the word spelled out for them, and then bam, they know a new swear word now..

i see this as a double-edged sword. if the person is polite and they find out that the word they used is a swear word they will know not to say it. but if the parents have access to the users browsing history and see that the user has searched up a swear word the user might get into trouble.

most of the time, someone says something inappropriate conciously. if the user says a swear word or something inappropriate in the forums knowingly, they should know that scratch does not condemn the use of such language so theyll be educated to not use inappropriate language in the future on scratch.

but in the unlikely case its a spelling mistake, and the user goes to search up what the swear means, they'll learn the wrong stuff, especially if the word's meaning is related to human body parts i shall not speak of. however, this is a extreme case and isnt scratch's fault, its an accident and accidents happen.

sorry if the points i made sound like something a 3 year old would say, i havent used the forums in a year so i forgot how to make constructive points

starhero5697 wrote:

but in the unlikely case its a spelling mistake, and the user goes to search up what the swear means, they'll learn the wrong stuff, especially if the word's meaning is related to human body parts i shall not speak of. so i have mixed feelings on this suggestion.

However, that's extremely rare. More often than not, when kids hear an inappropriate word, it's from someone else using the word and them hearing it. And at that point, it's not the Scratch Team's fault that the kid got exposed to the word, as long as it didn't happen on Scratch.

Y'know, there was once a time when I was in second grade, and accidentally covered up part of a word, and the part that wasn't covered up was the spelling of a swear word. I won't say what the word was, but some kids around me got concerned for trying to spell a bad word. In the end, I ended up learning it was a bad word, but I didn't get in trouble for it because it wasn't really anyone's fault; it was an accident.

In that same way, it isn't the Scratch Team's fault for trying to prevent users from making Scratch an unsafe place. It isn't anyone's fault; it's an accident.

Sliverus wrote:

(#9)
In that same way, it isn't the Scratch Team's fault for trying to prevent users from making Scratch an unsafe place. It isn't anyone's fault; it's an accident

great point. edited my post to reflect this statement.

another benefit about this suggestion is that maybe the filter detects something that actually isnt inappropriate and highlights something that isnt inappropriate and the user wont be confused on why the message was filtered. they can also let the scratch team know about the bug.

Support. The people on the forum are generally seen as slightly more mature than main site users (i dont think lil 6 year old jimmy is gonna be frequenting the bugs and glitchs and talking and syntax and allat)

This would also be nice since the comment bugs thread in BaG is now down, and Contact us is probably gonna flood

Support. The new filter is annoying.

Support. Imagine you try to post a 5,000-word essay, but it won't let you post it, so you have to spend hours examining the essay for anything that could've possibly triggered the filter. It could also say the part that triggered the filter. I also like Silverus' point about accidents.

<0-0::sensing>//This is Charles; he protects my signature from evil kumquats.
when I'm spawned::events hat//This is the code Charles' brain runs on.
forever
if <[100] > (distance to [an evil kumquat v])> then
delete the evil kumquat::control
end
end

Support. It's already implemented for comments and tells you what you did wrong after you get a message from the ST about your comment. But with ajskateboarder's reasoning, it should censor the words after you post it.

Bump (usually use my alt mainly for bumps )

Support. This happens to me too, and I think “What's wrong with the post?”

Yeah! I like that idea! Maybe it could also apply to commenting!

Would it eventually apply to commenting as well? I feel like since a lot less users (less than 1%) are on the forums than the main site it would be better restricted to only the forums.

when tuned to [drop c v] :: hat events
repeat until <drenched in sweat? :: sensing>
blast some epic [system of a down v] riffs :: motion
end

Xzillox wrote:

Would it eventually apply to commenting as well? I feel like since a lot less users (less than 1%) are on the forums than the main site it would be better restricted to only the forums.

I actually think a suggestion for that already exists. I personally wouldn't be opposed to it, but let's keep this discussion about the forum filter.

the common argument that comes up with this suggestion for the main site is that a user, probably a young child, may pick up a new bad word if they accidentally enter a bad word, and then the filter then tells the bad word.

But since that the forum community has an older audience and less off a wide-scope audience (less than 1% of Scratch Users use the forums), do you think this classic counter-argument still holds the same amount of merit?