censorship in URLs

Discussion in 'Site and Forum Feedback' started by jerwin, Jan 14, 2018.

  1. jerwin, Jan 14, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2018

    jerwin macrumors 68000

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2015
    #1
    Over on the PRSI board, it's getting difficult to talk about a certain elected leader without running afoul of the censorship algorithms. While it is possible to avoid vulgar language when opining in link-free text, many urls of late contain "bad words", and do not survive.

    A typical example:
    Screen Shot 144.png

    If, for whatever reason, you prefer not to display these words, could you change your algorithms so that the underlying url survives, while the link text is censored?
     
  2. tobefirst macrumors 68040

    tobefirst

    Joined:
    Jan 24, 2005
    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    #2
    Could you create a bit.ly link for the articles you wish to talk about? I can’t imagine that this problem happens all that frequently, though understand that it is an issue at the present moment.
     
  3. annk Administrator

    annk

    Staff Member

    Joined:
    Apr 18, 2004
    Location:
    Somewhere over the rainbow
    #3
    I suggest this fix for now - I'll alert the relevant people behind the scenes so they can see if there's anything that needs to be done to allow words categorized as profane, in links.
     
  4. GGJstudios macrumors Westmere

    GGJstudios

    Joined:
    May 16, 2008
    #4
    This is by far the easiest and most elegant solution, especially since this happens relatively infrequently.
    There is potential for abuse in allowing this. Posters who want to say something obscene could do so by formatting their post as a link, even if the link isn't functional. Doing so would bypass the profanity filters.
     
  5. maflynn Moderator

    maflynn

    Staff Member

    Joined:
    May 3, 2009
    Location:
    Boston
    #5
    We would then moderate them as per our policies. Link shorteners are already in use by members (and spammers), so I don't think its going to markedly increase the moderation overhead.
     
  6. GGJstudios macrumors Westmere

    GGJstudios

    Joined:
    May 16, 2008
    #6
    Link shorteners are fine, and preferable. I was referring to potential problems in allowing links that contain profanity in the URL. I'm not sure if I was clear.
     
  7. rafark macrumors 6502

    rafark

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2017
    #7
    It could be done but the problem is the algorithm just takes the whole post string and replaces unwanted characters. Changing this behaviour would require modifications that may not be available in the oficial forum or extension API's thus making the modification non-scalable and therefore, unviable.
     
  8. jerwin, Jan 16, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2018

    jerwin thread starter macrumors 68000

    Joined:
    Jun 13, 2015
    #8
    There are two link types:

    http://www.nytimes.com/

    The ****ing New York Times!

    Both lead to the same page.

    indeed, I could link this way

    http://www.nytimes.com/

    and you'd go to the onion instead. The url and the "link text" are separate entities, and it should be possible to bowdlerize the blue text without breaking the link.
     

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