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What censorship is doing to the Universal Chat...
Wizzdome
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I just want you (Disruptor Beam) to know that your censorship is tearing apart all you have worked so hard to build and prosper from. It is extremely disruptive and annoying. Many people who regularly spend their money playing your game are quitting because of your negligence towards the game. The censoring of context is not something that our modern technology can accurately predict. Though your attempts are appreciated by those who dislike trolls and bullies, those attempts are futile and your attempts are looking more like communistic attacks on the human language. I have tried to warn you once before and have only come back to the game in search of an actual player in your game that has in real life become missing. If you want to make the the Universal Chat work... take away the censorship... without the curiosity and the desire to beat the censor the universal chat will become respectable... you already have the ability to mute people you do not want to see or block them completely. I know you obviously do not monitor the chat as it is happening which if you are so adamant about protecting your players maybe you ought to invest in real moderators with the power to temporarily ban players from the public portion of chat following a warning. You could even recruit veteran players with rewards to accomplish this feat for absolutely free, costing you nothing, to do what your censor that is pushing people away from your game is doing. Without the censor so many people would not be so intensely set on being disruptive trying to beat or work around your censor which censors regular words out of a context that the programming is not intelligent enough to comprehend. I love this game and beg you even if it meant that i would have to be the only one to monitor the UC for free for you to keep peace and make this game what it ought to be. Otherwise what is the point in even having chat if you can not say what you want to say including the present date? I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of people out there that feel your censorship has gone way too far, and would feel more comfortable without it even there at all. I am only telling you this in hopes that you may do something to save your game from being sucked down the drain and eventually costing you more than you can afford to maintain it with. As one of my favorite games of all times i sincerely hope you do not just scoff at this message and take seriously into consideration the reversal of the new chat censor feature. The only thing that was wrong with the previous censor was a few (i do mean few) words that would have been nice to whitelist.
Sincerely,
Wizzdome
Sincerely,
Wizzdome
3
Comments
The best way to help with the moderation tool is to bring up specific cases in the relevant thread.
This will allow us to fine tune the tool. See what works for the game and what does not.
With all due respect the censor is ineffective for what DB is trying to do. I can creatively spell the F word in various ways, this beats the censor and everyone knows exactly what I’m saying.
Everyone on my fleet is an adult. We don’t need to be censored. There needs to be an option to disable the censor in fleet chat.
There are so many areas of the game that require a lot of work and DB is wasting time on updating new ways to remove some profanity.
I’ve previously said that I refuse to spend another dollar on this game until DB fixes the real issues. I’ve got an unanswered ticket now over a month old but DB has time to update the filter on a regular basis?
I sincerely hope you pass on my comments.
All instances of the number 69 is banned text, so for example you couldn't say your Captain's Level is 69 or even wright it out as sixty-nine. Simple spelling errors seem to be banned txt too. I miss spelled "likely" and it came up as banned txt.. what dirty word is that close to... I don't know that one?
I am not a fan of banning txt, it's pretty unamerican. I don't have to agree with everything people say or even like what they say.... and as yesterday was Veterans Day we should still likely thank the men and women who have fought for our rights to say it.
While I agree that the latest chat filtering has gotten to ridiculous levels, let's be clear here: Nobody's "rights" are being infringed upon. The First Amendment does not apply to private companies. The right to free speech in the USA is specifically in regards to the government not censoring you, restricting you, or penalizing you for what you say. A private (i.e., non-government-affiliated) company has every right to manage and run their business as they see fit. What they may not do is violate discrimination laws in dealing with employees or the public, but this is not what is happening here. They have just as much right to ban someone's words (or to outright ban that person) as a bar owner does to ask a drunk and unruly customer to leave their establishment or they will call the police to have them removed. And that "right", right there, is just as "American" as the First Amendment.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
QFT
I wish more understood this simple concept. Thank you for posting it Data1001.
I am sorry that is you took from my post that I was saying DB has some sort of legal obligation to provide free speech... that I was not meaning to say. I am sure that it is my fault for not explaining clearly.
However, the freedom to express yourself is something I believe most people value. I doubt we would be having this conversation if it wasn't. I fully admit that I don't find vulgarity for the most part offensive... "hate speech" on the other hand, I dislike intensely, including hate speech cloaked in religious dogma. I am sure there are many things that I find offensive more than a few dirty words many of which "... are only dirty some of the time" -- George Carlin
But getting back on track, there are far too many words banned in the chat program to the point where it is difficult to even have this kind of conversation.
The censor is beyond out of control. Normal, everyday words are being censored, and half of UC now is just a mass spam of #'s because of the ridiculousness involved with the "updated" censor. I can say "hell" all I want in there, but "crap" is somehow prohibited. We are all adults playing this game and have experienced a lot worse than someone dropping the f-bomb on occasion. If a child wanders into UC and sees normal adults conversing, that is on their parents for not monitoring what in hell they are doing. Most of us ignore and block the idiots running around throwing profanity and perverse things everywhere for the sake of getting a reaction because we do have common sense on the matter.
Players who spend a lot of money are legitimately quitting over this major issue. What is worse for DB; losing tons of revenue to a highly-flawed censor, or having one or two soccer moms up in arms because their five year old(s) they failed to watch like actual parents are supposed to do saw someone drop the f-bomb on some virtual reality game?
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.