Private topic language filtering...

[Viper GTS]

Any particular reason why private topics are now language filtered?

[EDIT]It seems to be somewhat sporadic as to what it catches & doesn't catch, perhaps it was a fluke that I didn't trip it previously.[/EDIT]

Viper GTS

 

[Lord Evermore]

The language filters don't catch some stuff that I wouldn't expect even in the regular forums. The private topics seemed to be filtered from the start as far as I quickly tested. Probably don't expect them to be unfiltered, even though they're "private", you could easily send a thread to someone else which they find offensive.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Probably don't expect them to be unfiltered, even though they're "private", you could easily send a thread to someone else which they find offensive.

I don't see how "fvck you" could be any more offensive as "I will beat you to death".

Also, are private forums treated like pm's - that is, unviewable by moderators/admins? Or are they treated like forums, as in, mods/admins have access to them?

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Probably don't expect them to be unfiltered, even though they're "private", you could easily send a thread to someone else which they find offensive.

I don't see how "fvck you" could be any more offensive as "I will beat you to death".

Also, are private forums treated like pm's - that is, unviewable by moderators/admins? Or are they treated like forums, as in, mods/admins have access to them?

Actually, PM's are viewable by Mods and Admins, they just pledge not to unless there are compelling reasons. At least, this is my understanding from previous times that issue has been raised.

ZV

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
Actually, PM's are viewable by Mods and Admins, they just pledge not to unless there are compelling reasons. At least, this is my understanding from previous times that issue has been raised.

ZV

I assumed it was more like, "Why would I want to read the crap PM's of 100,000 members when I could be doing something more constructive, like waxing my back." 😀

 

[Lord Evermore]

I thought it was pretty much established that the mods will read any PMs they want as a "random search" to make sure nothing is going on that shouldn't be. Supposedly they can't read private topics, but I'm not sure I believe that.

As for the difference between a swear word and a threat of physical harm, I'm not the one who makes up the rules, don't ask me why a swear is worse and needs to be filtered.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
I thought it was pretty much established that the mods will read any PMs they want as a "random search" to make sure nothing is going on that shouldn't be. Supposedly they can't read private topics, but I'm not sure I believe that.

I suppose what I meant was "are they officially allowed to view them?". I never assume that stuff here is 100% confidential - after all this is a web forum running over an unencrypted connection, with persistant storage for months or years, on computers belonging to someone else, with many different people having access to the data, and god knows what kind of people we have for moderators (or maybe god doesn't know! hah! he probably just sees "anandtech moderator" for a username too!).

But the point was not "if I post information on bombing president bush and invite all muslim members to my thread, will I get caught?", it was more along the lines of "are things like private 'babe threads' going to be intervened upon?" - basically, are they treated like forums or are they treated like pm's?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Ah, well, given that they're word-filtered still, one might think they're under all the same rules, but it may simply be that the word filter can't be disabled for one forum. I'd still think they'd be under all the same "offensive content" type rules, since you can pretty much force anyone to view any thread you create. Maybe they'll be lenient (HA!) unless it gets abused.