User-Configurable Censorship Options

[futureal]

Hi all,

This might sound like an odd hack, but I am looking for something that would allow users to toggle on/off the censorship feature of the site.

Would this be easy to do?

I have a site with a good number of teenage/young-adult users, some of which don't mind the occasional profanity, others who tend to be offended. I would like to give them the option to censor a default list of words. However, I don't want to do forum-wide censorship.

A "wish list" would include the option for users to individually set a list of words to be censored...

[Chris M]

This would be an excellent Idea!

Satan

[Xenon]

then code it satan ;)

actually this is doable, but you have to go throug some files to clean the censortext function out of it :)
change the censortext function in functions.php an other small things, not really hard to code, but timeintensive

[Logician]

Xenon is right.

And also IMO the most time intensive part is the SQL integration. You need an extra field in your database (probably in user table or you can make it a table on its own) and you need to code the section in USER CP and Admin CP to edit/modify this field. Adjust necessary templates etc..

It really takes time to code/debug but good idea so I hope somebody takes it on.

[Chris M]

I would have liked to, until you said SQL integration;)

I leave that kinda stuff to you...

I might give it a go...Im pretty busy at the moment though, getting my friend's site back and working, and my site, and other numerous bits...

Satan

[Admin]

Not the simplest hack, since censoring is done *before* the post is inserted into the database. You'll need to change that and have it censor the post (title, private messages, events, etc.) on the fly.

[Logician]

Originally posted by FireFly
since censoring is done *before* the post is inserted into the database.
Really? I havent noticed that before. IMO censoring the post before writing to db, is not the best practise. If Admin deletes a cencored word from the list, it stays cencored for all the existing posts. Probably they wanted to save the SQL query/CPU load for threadviews.

[Xenon]

yes it is, but as i know in pms aso its the other way round.

this is why i said it'll take really time becaus you have to change the censororder often :)

[futureal]

I knew that it was done beforehand, otherwise I might have tried it myself (although that probably wouldn't have been a good idea anyway!) :)

I also think it would be better to do the censoring on-the-fly rather than sticking it in the database, since (for reasons already mentioned) it is always nice to have a "fresh copy" of posts in case settings change in the future. Although, would there be performance issues in doing it on-the-fly? It seems like the posts are already being parsed on-the-fly for things like vBB code, smilies, etc.

If any brave soul out there is thinking about giving it a shot, and would like someone to help test it or provide feedback, I'd be glad to help.

[Xenon]

postings are censored before inserted in the db, and they are also censored on the fly....

theoretically you have to got through all files and delete the censoring before inserting in db. File like private.php, newreply.php, newthread.php, editpost.php, calendar.php aso.

then when there is only an on the fly censoring, it wouldn't be a problem anymore.
If you need help with the last step i can sure help you, but i won't go throug all files to find out the lines where you have to delete the censoring :)

[futureal]

I definitely have the patience to go through and find the things to change, that's not a problem at all. I just don't have the PHP/MySQL knowledge to do the part that would involve setting up a per-user configurable censor-list. In theory, it would be a setting with three options:

No Censor
Censor Default Words
Censor Custom Words (instead of OR in addition to default words)

If somebody could come up with that much of it, I think I could (probably) do the rest (the tedious stuff) and hopefully lear something in the process.

Any takers? :D

[Xenon]

No Censor
Censor Default Words
Censor Custom Words (instead of OR in addition to default words)

this options would be very easy if you chose one part at the last option: instead or in additon. if you want to let users also choose that, you'll need 2 additional fields un the usertable, if you choose it for the user you need just a small edit in function.php, in member.php aother small edit, and adding 1 new field to the user-table.

if you want to do so, i can code the changes for you :)

[Smoothie]

This would be quite interesting.

[futureal]

Originally posted by Xenon
this options would be very easy if you chose one part at the last option: instead or in additon. if you want to let users also choose that, you'll need 2 additional fields un the usertable, if you choose it for the user you need just a small edit in function.php, in member.php aother small edit, and adding 1 new field to the user-table.

I don't mind the two additional fields at all. I assume you'd need one int field to select between the 3 (actually 4) options, and then one *?* field to contain a list of words.

Then the hack can use the original vBulletin censor list as the "default" list.

Once all of that is in there, it seems like it should just be a question of rearranging the censor code from before-insertion to on-the-fly.

I was thinking a little bit more about any performance issues, and since it seems to me that only a small percentage of users would actually use the censor, and we only need to do on-the-fly censoring for those that have it active, there really should not be any sort of performance hit. It's just one more option that should really enhance things for those who do not want to see the vulgar side of things, and for fed-up moderators who just can't read every word of every post.

[Xenon]

actually just two options for the int field (more likely it a binary then ;))
yes/no code to that question: additional use default censoringwords?

if a user select no, and has no words in his censorword list, then it'll be like no censoring ;), if he has words in it, it'll be like just censoring his words.
selecting yes with no words is default censoring and selecting yes with additional words is censoring default words and user words.

ok, make new fields to usertable called censoroption i'd say tiny int and field censorwords varchar(250) or how much you want ;)

open functions.php
find this code:
global $enablecensor,$censorwords,$censorword,$censorchar ;
in section strat censortext

replace it with global $enablecensor,$censorwords,$censorword,$censorchar ,$bbuserinfo;

if($bbuserinfo[censoroption]==0) {
$censorword=$bbuserinfo[censorwords];
} else {
if(trim($bbuserinfo[censorwords]!="") {
$censorword.=" ".$bbuserinfo[censorwords];
}
}


then all you need to do is to add the yes/no code and an inputbox for the censorwords to the user-cp and add that values to the database (editing member.php)

[FASherman]

Has anyone gotten around to making this a formal hack yet?

[TruthElixirX]

THere is one already, but it has screwed up my tables and colors on my site. I've been lookngi for another one but none have shown up.