Censorship!

[72Challenger]

Is this what they had the board down so long for? I've noticed several posts now where the board seems to be censoring our posts. Examples:

**** Landy, **** Tracy, ***** storm.

Let's see how they get posted.

[72Challenger]

Yep, just what I thought. So an icon of the Mopar world has a name that can't be posted on our board. Unless we call him Richard, or do what Rumblefish figured out:

D
i
c
k Landy. Let's try this: D i c k Landy.

So hey, administrator, is this how you've made our board better for us? No wonder it's gotten so slow!

Oops, have to stop ranting now, my ***** cat's meowing to be let out.

[rumblefish360]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ha Thanks '72challenger! I agree, This is
B
U
L
L
S
H
I
T
!
Now , what happened to my post to begin with? I can understand a glitch, but what the heck is it with this,
C
R
A
P
! Gee, I hope that wasn't to bad.

[Maxwedge]

You guys are nutz.HA

[Dr. Righteous]

I have been on this board (and on it just about everyday) for over a year now. I have not noticed usage of offending fowl language or anything.
We are a bunch of car guys and we occasionally bust a nuckle and rant and rave some. Then we go get in our car and do a long smokey burnout that most drivers of newer sport cars can only dream about.
Not your adverage lot of people don't ya think? But we are GOOD people. I think if some punks showed up and started posting garbage here we would stand for it.
I'm sure most of us pay or taxes, are civic minded and attend church regularly.
(OH YEAH, I am sure that at least 90% of us voted Republican)

[mike mopar]

RIGHT ON! No wonder they call you Dr. Righteous!!!
Mike

[72Challenger]

DrR, you're absolutely correct. So, will someone please explain to me why the administrator decided it was necessary to censor us? We're not obscene people, we just like obscenely powerful cars! Right, **** ? (I mean Richard)

[Christopher]

Obviously the censoring is from posts like these.

[RED T/A]

no glitch rumblefish360 must have been alot of ranting going on about that subject I posted a question to you to ask what happened to the original post and it was erased from the board in less than 5 min.

[Maxwedge]

The only thing I have ever censored was/were(?) a few flame wars.
Max

[Maxwedge]

The only thing I have ever censored was/were(?) a few flame wars. I ahve noticed that one of my older debates about "4 gears vs Autos" got cut up, probably due to one of those server change overs. Thankfully the Hemi thread has been maintained.
Max

[RED T/A]

I think rumblefish360 posted on DC layoffs I replied censoring my own language, I'm sure everyones replies where heated, then I checked the next day the post was gone. Then, I posted a question to him asking what happened to his original post and 5 min later when I was back on the board my post was gone; coincidence? I checked and it was posted to the board before being wiped out.

[abalto]

What happened is that we added some words to the censor log and there were a few code errors and the censor trip was picking everything...that is why we had a day or so with posts that had a lot of stars.

Also, to the posts below with profanity..can we please keep it rated G people? We have people in here of all different ages...we really don't need the redneck profanity.

Just my opinion...I am sure the majority of us agree...

[Christopher]

I agree,it does need to be G rated.I know of some high school auto shop students that read these posts daily.

[72Challenger]

First of all, I would like to apologize for posting this in the wrong forum, and thank whoever moved it here (instead of deleting it).

As to what is being censored, I'm not refering to the moderators editing messages. I'm talking about the automated censoring of certain words, like the nickname of Mr. Richard Landy. Yes, that's also a vulgarism for the male anatomy, but don't you think that's going a little too far? Also the word ***** , as in n-a-s-t-y storm? The weather can be offensive in parts of the country, yes, but aren't we allowed to talk about it?

I've only been a member for a few months, but I've read the posts in many of the forums going back as far as they go. I see very little in the way of vulgar behavior. I'm a practicing Christian, and I don't use profanity myself, but I was in the Navy for 6 years, and I doubt there's anything I haven't heard before. Certainly nothing on this board that I've seen could be considered offensive. With that in mind, why was it deemed necessary to even implement such a policy? Were any complaints made? If so, I can understand why this was done, this is a public board, and consideration should be made for people's feelings and sensibilities. I just found it absurd that innocuous words and phrases should be censored out. I'm also concerned about the overhead involved in doing so. The board is often very busy, could this be contributing to degraded response times?

Yes, abalto, I agree that this should be a G rated board. I'm on several professional lists related to my job (I'm a network administrator myself), and these are self-policing. If someone gets a little to carried away, the other members are quick to put them in their place. Maybe you feel that such a policy won't work in this type of forum. Maybe you're right. But the frustration of the board being down for several days, then having it garble posts, then start censoring harmless words, was just a little too much for me to take without comment. I'd be very interested in hearing your feedback on this.

All in all, I'm very glad to be a member of this board. I've been working on cars for over 30 years, and have still learned quite a bit over the last few months. I've also looked at the "other" mopar site, and consider this one to be superior. I'm just a little puzzled by some of the changes, such as taking away the members email addresses (maybe done to stop spammers? Okay then! But there are ways to protect the addresses from harvesting without preventing private replys to members) and the censoring. I guess mostly the censoring, because it seemed so silly.

Well, if you've read this far, then thanks for your patience, and for letting me vent. I'm sure your interests are only in making the board better, and I appreciate that.

Brian

[abalto]

Brian:

Thanks for your comments and thoughts.

We will always listen to the input of our members, and build upon the constructive critizism. I agree that the censor list may be a bit too tight, and we just recently (like this morning!) deleted some of the many words that we had in the list. I personally looked through the list and removed some of the words. (For example BB pointed out one was mistress was on the list! We removed that one too!) Keep in mind that we really just grabbed a list of common censor words and pasted them in the censor list...or one of my employees did.

Also, yes the board has been up and down and we apologize. We have been experiencing strong member growth (some days 30 or more new members!), and we have been attempting the accomodate this growth. We did have the site on a production server that was also doing other services, but we noticed performance degrading. We had to move the site to its own server now...just to stablize the performance, etc. It is now on a dedicated dual Pentium II, Micron server running hardware RAID, etc.

Many of you do not know what goes on behind the scenes, but please know that many people invest real time and real money (me!) into making this site a real place to call home. A real Mopar resource. 100,000 posts and growing!

If this site happens to go down, I am paged...24 hours a day...and I either personally crawl out of bed, or call an assistant to get things back running.

Just last night we had a transaction server error that was playing all hell with us, and we fooled with it for quite some time...and finally got it resolved. When you visit the site and see the site slow or not up, it usually us either fine tuning or restarting the server or yet another update.

We have some very sound and progressive plans for upgrades here. Some very exciting stuff indded. We will be (in the not too distant future) be running our board from a SQL based software package that will utilize the full power of SQL server.

Please bear with the growing pains...I think you will like what the future holds

...and, back to the censor list or any other issues...if something needs to be tweaked or modified for the better...just post it or email us.

Thanks,

abalto

PS - I am taking a little break in Florida now (little four day vacation)...and on a Saturday night now, I am not out partying! I am doing "MoparChat stuff!"


[This message has been edited by abalto (edited February 02, 2001).]

[RED T/A]

Sorry,I thought it was a random sensoring by adms. but the one thread I thought would have interesting replies was gone and when I asked about it my post dissapeared also so I was a little bugged. Ive only been here a month and have had my spark knock problem solved plus many questions answered on my Challenger the benefits of this site are priceless. Profanity, I get and give more than my share at work and try only to use it as emphasis in posts but don't see the need for the obscene variety. Sorry once again for my misunderstanding of the way the board works and I'll try to keep my colorful metaphors to a minimum.

[K Rich]

Originally posted by Christopher:
I agree,it does need to be G rated.I know of some high school auto shop students that read these posts daily.

I am not advocating the use of offensive language (I do not use it in my posts), but high school students already know all the words we think are offensive, and probably have come up with some new ones of their own.



------------------
1997 Dodge Ram Sport Club Cab 4x4, 318/auto, Flowmaster 40 series cat back dual exhaust
1973 Dodge Charger SE, original 400/slapstik combo, 80,000 original miles
1983 Dodge Mirada CMX, 318, 340 cam, Mopar Performance Electronic Ignintion (bye-bye lean burn system), true dual exhaust with glasspacks, loaded except for moon roof

[montrose ram]

I have not seen "The List". Alot of
people are accoustomed to profanity in
our culture today. Just watch cable TV
for a while! Network TV NBC, ABC etc.
have loosened their standards and they
can now say words like the "B" , a$$
but you still have to be careful with
d''k, tho! In the mass media like
magzines and newspapers, profane words
are refered to discretely like f..king
or bulls..t if it's integral to the
story that they be included. We shold
never "flame' at each other on this
board even tho we may vehemently
disagree. Let's flame(within
guidelines) at more worthy subjects
and keep a respect for one another.

[RufusTheRam]

redneck profanity abalto?? not all of us with a little red on our necks use it... and i agree with keeping it off the boards. just because the kids may already know the words and some new ones, doesn't make it right. it hasn't been too long since i came out of the public school system, and yeah we knew most of them by 7th or 8th grade. i think we need to set an example here of what kind of people MOPAR people are. and whether you like it or not, language like that is trashy and it doesn't speak highly of what sort of person you are when used in a public place with all types of people such as this. sure, when you're with a buddy or two or something has really ticked you off "the really bad ones" fly. it happens. and a hell or damn here and there i don't think is a problem, i admit i use those every so often on the board. but i just think we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. why? because we represent an elite brand of vehicles that doesn't need to be degraded because we want to curse like a bunch of sailors. i think society has become too accepting of this language, as you can see on tv and in movies. i haven't noticed anyone really letting things fly on a regualr basis on the board either, this is just my take on the subject and some things to keep in my. and yes, i'll admit i voted conservative republican Dr. Righteous...

[GUAM SS/T]

I think for the most part the people on this board censor themselves very well. Yes, we all do something offensive to someone else sooner or later, but there are very few occasions where these posts are as bad as television or radio. I would definately vote for loosening the reigns since very few persons under the age of 16 are going to be on this board and those that are will most likely not learn any new words. I have been impressed with the quality of this board for a long time and I doubt it will be overtaken by foul mouthed Chevy types any time soon. By the way, Why don't Chevy and Ford come up as ***** and ****???????

[ehostler]

Another word that should be removed from the censor list is S-U-C-K. I know, your are thinking why would anyone need a word like that here.

In the Ram Truck area, someone recently made a post where they stated that they were going to use the PVC line to s-u-c-k it out of the can. S-u-c-k is also often used when talking about vacuum leaks.


------------------
Ed - MoPower

'96 Dodge Ram 1500 SLT CC 360 4X4
'68 Charger 383-4
'69 Coronet 500 Convertible 440-4

[GUAM SS/T]

I was gonna say that s u c k was needed I think if it isn't blatantly profane and can have a common non profane use it is worth the risk. you know, words like s u c k, blow, rod, shaft, wood, clam, bunghole, pipe, slit, gash, nuts, screw, balls, nipple, prick and crank. Come to think of it I could probably offend anyone with a slew of non offensive words.

Feel free to delete this post, remember two things though. We can always censor ourselves better than the computer and I didn't use even one profane word in this entire post.

[rumblefish360]

Hello everybody;

Just read all the posts. And man o man are my eyes tired. Great posts from every one.
I would like to say thanks to 72Challenger for pointing me here. I had know idea where it went. And was VERY upset at a harmless post that contained the name D I C K Tracy and the word N A S T Y. that was a term for the weather.
The post that started this was a mess. It had more stars on it than letters. It wasn't even a rant. Just tryin to help a fella here.
A member wrote to me and told me what happened. I went back to the post. I was confused as to why I had more stars than Hollywood. So I re-wrote the post. (as best as I could remember) and checked it when I was done. MORE STARS! I edit, MORE STARS!
At this point I understood what was going on. And I WAS NOT UPSET. So I made another post stateing the words in question running up & down.
My post at the bottom where I talk about Bull chips is me getting attention the wrong way. Just a bad vent. Sorry about that.
I agree with everybodys post on the quality of the board. This place is better than sliced bread. Although , that term is lacking. Better yet....its a home away from home. For all the reasons your here, I'm here.
72 challengers post dated 2-02, the 4th post down.Is what I would say except he said it better. His words are my words. Except I've been into cars for about 20yrs.
I also gave a rant before that was NOT foul filled and seen it vanish. Actually, the bull-chip post was the worst. And its still here! (?????????????)

Max wedge...Actually, I am nuts. And most of my freinds (are nuts ) and have papers to prove it.

RED T/A Can you refresh my memory on the topic. I can't remember being that bad.

GUAM SST...Great post. I could have a feild day with those word. Like this, nddh i
***gt***c gb***n vgc***vgi**** ** e*ui***ug***
Only kidding.
I look foward to your next story by the way. Keep kickin the rice cans around, HUH!
I'll keep it clean and check back tommorrow. Its getting late and I gotta go to work.

Peace all rumblefish360

[abalto]

Stew:

You have continued to SPAM our board here over and over. You have registered under a number of user names and posted leader ads to your site. You can see that we do have many people that stop by provide their URL to there site...no problem. It was the way that you went about it...you posted on your site encouraging people to visit all the MOPAR sites and spam to get traffic. That is the problem we have.

Andy

[72Challenger]

Okay, so let's test the new filter list.

Dick Landy. ***** storm.

Okay, we're halfway there! Still don't understand why n-a-s-t-y can't be posted, but it's better!

[This message has been edited by 72Challenger (edited February 06, 2001).]

Originally posted by abalto:
Stew:

You have continued to SPAM our board here over and over. You have registered under a number of user names and posted leader ads to your site. You can see that we do have many people that stop by provide their URL to there site...no problem. It was the way that you went about it...you posted on your site encouraging people to visit all the MOPAR sites and spam to get traffic. That is the problem we have.

Andy

Here's the problem, other people have had the same thing happen, like one guy posted about a group buy for Dakotas and you reprimanded him. I put my website in my sig, all my messages get deleted, WTF?????? IMHO< you aren't in this site for the Mopar enthusiast, but to see how many sponsers you can get and how much bread you can make
Oh, and it's nice how took away my posting priveledges because I asked a simple question.
Brian



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[WEDGEMAN3]

Gentlemen......,I also believe that there is a need to mask some of the colorful posts that we occasionally experience on this site. However we need to examine this policy just a little closer. I befuddles me how we can do a makeover on Mr.Landy's name.(if he dosent have a problem with it why should we)and then allow words such as "COBRA" or "LIGHTNING" be used ! ? ! My God ....,children have access to this site ! LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
To all administrators at Moparchat.....,Your doing a great job guys ...,Keep up the good work ! ! !

------------------
WEDGEMAN3

[abalto]

Originally posted by Mopar Manniac:
Here's the problem, other people have had the same thing happen, like one guy posted about a group buy for Dakotas and you reprimanded him. I put my website in my sig, all my messages get deleted, WTF?????? IMHO< you aren't in this site for the Mopar enthusiast, but to see how many sponsers you can get and how much bread you can make
Oh, and it's nice how took away my posting priveledges because I asked a simple question.
Brian

I have news for you Brian...we have had this problem with you for many, many months! We had to ban your IP because you would register a username and you would make 30 posts..spamming each and every board. Then you would go back to your site and and encourage your members to visit our board and other, and SPAM the board to get traffic to your site. This is a problem that we have been playing with you since last Summer. Do not try to make an impression like we have singled you our or wronged you...you have jerked us around for about a year now!

Then we banned one of your several personal usernames (after going through this cycle three or four times) and you waited a few months or so and sent a message to our support e-mail address acting like you had no idea why you can't post on our site here.

Remember this?

THE BEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!!!!! DaPurpleRT June 03, 2000 Vintage MOPAR chat
Check this out guys..... DaPurpleRT June 04, 2000 Vintage MOPAR chat
THE BEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!!!!! DaPurpleRT June 03, 2000 Front Wheel Drive Chat
THE BEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!!!!! DaPurpleRT June 03, 2000 Viper R/T 10 Chat...
R/T FONT? DaPurpleRT May 20, 2000 Rumors and Gossip, etc...
THE BEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!!!!! DaPurpleRT June 03, 2000 Rumors and Gossip, etc...
THE BEST WEBSITE EVER!!!!!!!! DaPurpleRT June 03, 2000 Events and Gatherings


Little more info and it has been mentioned here before...we haven't made a dime off of ANY sponsors or advertising here! The banners are Link Exchange banners...to help point new users here. I don't know where all this bread is that you are talking about.

We have plenty of people here that post URL's...we just try to keep things under control. Your only goal of being here is to post your URL and to get traffic. If you wanted to make a home here for a few months and then refer people over to your site that would have been one thing...but you just register and start SPAMMING the board. And not once, but like a half dozen times. Then you apologized and said you would not do it again, and we allowed you to post, and the very next day you spammed the board yet AGAIN!

Lastly, the guy that posted the group buy for the Dakota part of whatever, has to understand that he cannot just register and start to post group buys. Who is he? Is he bonded? Insured? a dealer? Are our members protected if he decides to take the money he has collected and go out and just buy himself some parts...and rip our members off? I do not care who that would have been...we cannot just have any stranger stop by and start to post group buys for members here. If that person would have ripped off some of our members, they would have blamed MoparChat! We would have been ultimately responsible.

Please either grow up and respect our rules that we have created here or do not visit our site. We want everyone to be a part of our site here and we work very hard to make this a nice place, but we would rather avoid this kind of aggravation.

Andy



[This message has been edited by abalto (edited February 09, 2001).]

[rumblefish360]

72 Challenger; You crack me up!