Chat filters

I never bothered to turn the chat filter in WoW of, with sometimes surprising results. I do speak three languages, English, German, and French, and when I used in a conversation the German word for "less", which is "weniger", it got censored to "we@#?%&", in spite of me having only used one "g". Good that I don't live in Nigeria, it would be annoying to answer "@#?%&ia" every time somebody asks you where you are from. :)

The Register recently had a story about somebody not allowed to sign up to Yahoo with his real name, Callahan, because using "allah" in usernames was prohibited, to avoid religious tensions. All of which is a bit counter-productive.

In the recent "GLBT-friendly guild" discussion in WoW, people were complaining about teenagers using expressions like "this is sooo gay" in general chat. It seems that gay isn't filtered. Filtering is a double-edged sword, because if you do, you suppress the bad teenager comments, but you also effectively suppress the freedom of speech of people wanting to talk about their sexual orientation. Well, teenagers will probably change their slang soon anyways, and say "this is sooo brokeback". :)

Fact is that a filter is unable to see whether something is an insult or not. In Everquest, when I asked people to assist me, it came out as "%@?ist". But if in true roleplaying mode in SWG I tell somebody "Your mother was a bantha", nothing gets censored. My favorite insult is from Terry Pratchet's disc world books, where the trolls are basically living rocks, and some dwarf insults a troll with the words "your mother was a ore". :) Again that would escape any filter. As would typical WoW insults like "did you buy this character on EBay?", or the classic " you n00b". Anyone playing a tauren has probably heard a thousand cow jokes.

I guess game companies just put in the chat filter to appease the politically correct crowd and avoid law suits. That is why you can only turn them on or off, with no way to configure them to your tastes.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:43 AM Permanent Link