Publication and update of banned words in each language
Hello Wayfarer Team Staff!
You are probably aware that there are currently some banned words in the supported languages for wayspot nominations.
However, since these are not specifically announced, there are times when they are caught unexpectedly and cannot be nominated or corrected.
This happened to me the other day.
So I wrote a simple explanation, HOLD it, and then went to the Wayfarer site to check it, carefully shaving off words, and what I found was ridiculous.
It is "hage-mu" in Japanese.
In English, it corresponds to "endeavor", "be zealous", "brace oneself".
Japanese is "rather easy to speak" among the world's languages.
However, it is said that "reading and writing is one of the most difficult in the world".
This is probably due in large part to the fact that the language is a combination of three characters: kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
Now, why did "hage-mu" fall under the prohibited words this time?
It is the "hage" part.
Among the homonyms of "hage" in Japanese is the meaning of the word " bald".
I couldn't help but laugh.
By the way, I don't like to make the explanation so full of kanji, but when I wrote "hage-mu" using the correct kanji, it was removed from the prohibited word restriction.
Since Wayfarer is based in English, it is unavoidable that something like this could happen.
However, we can reduce the number of such incidents like this one by publishing the prohibited words in each language.
Also, it should be possible for native speakers of the language to update the banned words so that they can utilize them correctly.
Please consider this.
Comments
I have been nominating a series of tree identification signs at a nearby metro park. I was unable to include the scientific name of this particular tree because it was offensive.
Yes, that filter is bad enough. Imagine that your description is invalid because it contains one of banned words in English even if it's separated by a space:
Yet it allow description contains an offensive word in Bahasa Indonesia (and other languages not supported in Niantic Wayfarer and other apps, I guess).
Other languages, too, but I feel again the need to edit the list of prohibited words after publishing it.
I have heard from others that proper nouns from the Okinawa region, which happen to include the Japanese pronunciation of a derogatory term for African Americans in English (in Japanese, the pronunciation is just written in katakana), could not be registered in the title.
Therefore, I must say that Niantic's system of banned words is quite a poor system.
I doubt any "Wayfarer Team Staff" will look at this post. They just aren't that present here.
And, they think the filter is working as expected. Because they fear trolls taking over their system, making wayspots x rated. They aren't going to give you a list, because it could get to the trolls, and they'd come up with ways to work around it.