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Bad words filter blocks legitimate words in non-English languages
bilde2910
Posts: 76 ✭✭✭
The bad words filter reacts to any substring of words that are on the list of blocked words, even if said substring is part of a word that is not offensive in the language used for the description of the wayspot.
Here's an example:
Dette tok slutt for 50 år siden.
This sentence is Norwegian and translates to "This ended 50 years ago."
Wayfarer prevents me from putting this sentence into a description on Wayfarer because one of the words above contains, as a substring, a certain bad word relating to some **** activity. However, the word (as a whole) is a perfectly acceptable word in Norwegian language. The error message returned when putting this in the description is "Failed to validate description."
Submitting in-game also provides non-descript error messages. Submitting such a description from Ingress will result in a generic "failed to submit nomination"-type error message, possibly indicating server issues, not a problem with the bad words filter. This is after usage of mobile data to upload the images for the nomination. I personally thought the nominations server was down until I tried to modify another wayspot in Wayfarer at home.
Comments
It also censures the names of two former United States presidents, George **** and George ****!
I can't name a submission Schützengilde, because "zengi" is blocked. Whatever that even means
The badwordfilter is broken in total.
You cant write "Auschwitz" but if you write "Auschwi†z" († instead of t), the system doenst care.
Why would anybody not at that historical site want to use that word in their Wayspot? Am I missing something? It seems silly to ban it because it will likely only be used in a correct context.
Noantics has never explained what they are trying to achieve with their filter. They cannot easily prevent children from being cruel to each other, so they instead block words that may seem to have PG- R- or X-rated connotation.
The filter proves that they are trying, and therefore not legally responsible if any harm is done, even though it doesn’t protect the user, at all.
Niantic never properly explains anything. What do expect? They have disdain for their own customers, unfortunately.
Their filter is just terrible. Even words that are separated with spaces (" ") are unacceptable if contains any banned words.
Now try to guess which banned word contained in the place below:
This is ridiculous. I got the bad word error message twice today. The first time I just had to give up even making the submission. That was a very long bench in the center of my city.
Second one with a different nomination went ok, but then when I tried to edit to make the description better after it showed up in my Wayfarer contribution list, bad word error message again.
This was the text i tried to save:
Nr. 25 af 30 fliser med fuglen Pip på kunststien for børn. Her finder Pip info til os om Kong Frederik d. 6. og Frederiksgade. Hele ruten er 3 km lang og streetart-kunstneren Mikkel Jessen står bag de fine illustrationer. Følg med via app'en Opdag Aarhus.
Translated, somewhat roughly, from Danish: No. 25 of 30 [pavement] tiles with Pip the bird on the art route for children. Here Pip finds info for us about King Frederik the 6th and Frederiksgade (street name). The whole route is 3 km long and street art artist Mikkel Jessen is the creator of the lovely illustrations. Follow [...] via the Opdag Aarhus app.
I can't even see what would be the offensive English word?
What's up with this? 😶 And I see this is an older and known bug, by now at least. Why is it still bugging?
(Continued:)
I tried removing the word Pip from the description. Then I was able to save it with the new text.
Just a few problems now: The bird's name IS Pip and this is essential for the nomination and the text. But now my saved text just missed the bird's name. Which makes it quite random to read.
To add to the stupidity of this error, Pip was allowed in the title... 🤪
Also the German word "sodass" is blocked for whatever reason. https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/sodass
This super aggressive word filter makes submitting POI a real hassle, because you then have to switch out words just to figure out which word caused the problem.
@Niantic Can you at least tell us in the error message which word is causing the error? Also consider a less aggressive filter because it blocks legitimate words, thus decreasing the quality of descriptions/titles when players have to invent words to circumvent the filter.
Last year, the previous community manager (sic) gave this statement about the Trust & Safety team regarding banned words:
This never happened. Tweet the NianticWayfarer website if you're on Twitter, they are pretty responsive there. While they have taken a super proactive approach in eliminating all possibilities of bad words coming through, several just slip through without a hinge and they ban regular words anyway.
Today I was unable to submit a very cool diving platform far out on the tip of the harbour because the correct Danish name for it is Dykkeplatform. Dykke means dive. Every form of the word dykke, for whatever idiotic reason, is blocked and I can't save.
The bad-word filter stands in the way of proper and correct nomination text and degrades Wayfarer.
I have a wayspot submission called something with "birds" in German and that word is blocked too (only the plural from). But if you write it in the alternate form "Voegel" (oe instead of ö), then it works. This should be fixed.
The reason is because it's used as a rude way to call someone a lesbian in English.
They really shouldn't block words that are bad in one country/language in others.
I had problems submitting stuff in a village called Betchworth because all variations of B*tch letter combinations are caught in the filter took me ages to work out it was the village name tripping the filters.
Surely just blocking the one variation that could be considered rude (female dog) would have been enough ...
The filters work badly in their current basic form.
Yes, it's so extra. I thought it might be the that, the slur for lesbians - but there are two k's in dykke, so it confused me. Also, in the Danish language compound words (?) are written in one word, not more 'parted' words. That's why it would be 'Dykkeplatform', not 'Dykke platform' - but even with no space between, still it gets censored out.
Your example with the village name is brilliant for demonstrating how the filter needs to be completely made over. I also saw someone mention former president George ****'s last name being censored. That's a great example of how bad this is too. 😄
Hahaha... Well, there we go. Uhm, former president George Shrub, then! 🤠
Meanwhile in the UK
Handily sitting next to
At one point I couldn't submit a butterfly sculpture because of the **** part xD
But (no pun intended) have submitted some since with it in which weren't blocked.
This other one I think was submitted under a different title then edited in wayfarer where it wasn't blocked.
Maybe (anytime after NianticCasey's Feb 2021 note) the Trust and Security Team changed it to compare title to the address, and refrain from censoring words that are in the name of the city or street. (If not: Niantic please take that as a suggestion. Description too.)
I understand Niantic's hesitancy to spell out how the filter works. Because you know some jerks will then figure out how and what to work around the censure, and get something bad in game.