End-User Options - User Based Word Censorship

Info:

This mod allows a user to toggle word censorship from an option in their profile.

The following areas are covered by this mod:

• Forum lists
• Viewing threads/posts
• Viewing user profiles
• Groups
• Albums
• Who's Online list
• Tags
• Searches
• Most private message stuff
• Usertitles

It works by disabling censorship globally (so text gets into the database uncensored) and then selectively re-enabling it if the user has censorship enabled in their profile.

Installation:

Enable word censorship in the AdminCP area under vBulletin options and configure the words to block.

Import the XML file as a product under the 'Plugin System --> Manage Products' area of the AdminCP.

By default the censorship option in their profile will be checked, which disables word censorship.

You can change some product options for this mod by selecting the 'User Censorship Options' setting group from the vBulletin Options area in the AdminCP.

Uninstalling:

If you remove this product and want to stick with the normal vBulletin censoring system, then update the post cache and clear the parsed signatures under the 'Maintenance --> Update Counters' area of the AdminCP.

Changelog:

v0.1 (2/23/10)

• Initial release

v0.2 (2/24/10)

• Fix the plugin that censors group discussions.
• Add a plugin to censor the pagetitle as set by navbits.

v0.3 (2/27/10)

• Added an option to control if words are censored for visitors/unregistered users.
• Added an option to control the default censorship value for newly registered users.

v0.4 (8/10/10)

• Improved support for vBulletin 4.x.x (Thanks to CClements for the bug report and testing).

[crs6785]

The bug with vBulletin 4.x.x has been fixed, so I've uploaded the new version. If anyone encounters any other issues with this product feel free to let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.

[BirdOPrey5]

I really like the idea of this mod but I have a couple of questions:

1) How does it affect performance- how are the posts cached? Are only the uncensored versions cached? Are both cached? Does the last one called replace the other- etc... I could see this effectively doubling the load if it isn't implemented right...

2) Is this system able to more or less guarantee the uncensored words would never shop up for someone with censorship enabled- including in 3rd party mods like vbAdvanced CMS and the Arcade high scores?

[crs6785]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

1) How does it affect performance- how are the posts cached? Are only the uncensored versions cached? Are both cached? Does the last one called replace the other- etc... I could see this effectively doubling the load if it isn't implemented right...

Only uncensored versions are cached. There are not enough hooks in place (based on my understanding of how the caching is achieved...perhaps I'm wrong though :/ ) to create a cached censored and uncensored version. That would obviously be the ideal solution. Then it could retrieve the cached censored or uncensored version depending on user specific settings. The only solutions to that problem, that I can see, involve modifying the source itself.

Regarding performance, I was wondering about that myself. I'm not sure because I haven't had any feedback from a heavily used forum that tried it and I don't have access to one to try it.

However, a while back I did a simple benchmark of the page load times for a long thread with lots of censored words. The result was ...

0.09227 seconds - With Censor
0.08614 seconds - Without Censor

Which is a 0.00613 second difference. For a short thread with not as much text/stuff to censor the difference was 0.00181 seconds. For things like profile pages, albums, and groups there wasn't a difference in load time.

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

2) Is this system able to more or less guarantee the uncensored words would never shop up for someone with censorship enabled- including in 3rd party mods like vbAdvanced CMS and the Arcade high scores?

There was only one spot in the private message system where there wasn't enough hooks to censor something (PM page titles or something like that...), other than that I think I pretty much covered it all.

Things in 3rd party mods would probably just come across uncensored. A global, fool proof solution, to having censorship controlled as a user based option is going to require rewriting a lot of stuff in vbulletin. It simply wasn't designed with that in mind.

[CClements]

BirdOPrey5,

This mod is definitely worth a shot if user-based censorship is what you are going for. :up:

I don't run a heavily trafficked site, but the mod works great on mine. Plus the "more experienced" generation of members on my board really appreciate not having to read all the foul language on the board.

Download it and give it a shot. See what happens.

[BirdOPrey5]

The problem is I don't (can't) have obscene language showing up in my vbadvanced homepage or my arcade high scores or some other place I'm not thinking of- besides the bad light it would shed on the board and offended members I think it would red-flag the site in some web filtering programs as an 'adult' or worse, 'racist/hate' site and knock out visibility to many of my members who browse from work.

I'm all for the idea of user-based censorship but I can't take the chance of having uncensored parts of my page- my uses will find them. As is I have a mod that disables the word censor per forum id so we have a private 'anything goes' forum but no one can accidentally access it nor is it crawled by search or indexing spiders.

[CClements]

I don't know how it will handle vbadvanced because I don't have it installed, but I do have ibproarcade installed. I'll check and see if it censors anything in the arcade high scores...

[CClements]

It censors the words in the ibproarcade high scores. :up:

[BirdOPrey5]

Thanks.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by CClements

It censors the words in the ibproarcade high scores. :up:

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

Thanks.

... but you're using v3 Arcade.

EDIT: I'll install a test copy somewhere to test it. If it isn't currently working as expected, then I'll put a change in so it does.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by KW802

... but you're using v3 Arcade.

EDIT: I'll install a test copy somewhere to test it. If it isn't currently working as expected, then I'll put a change in so it does.

I know but it was the thought that counted.

I don't have the arcade on my test install... if I decide to go this way I'll try it.

You have any guess on if it would work on VBadvanced?