There’s a great episode of Family guy called PTV, basically Peter sets up his own television station after the FCC censor all sorts of things after someone has a wardrobe malfunction at the Emmy awards, Peter is aghast at the censorship, which includes Dick Van Dyke having Dick and Dyke blanked out. So where Family Guy treads, it seems Linden Lab follow.
The above may sound familiar to older readers, it’s from this post of mine from March 2011. Eventually the issue was fixed, however it’s back, well partially back, if you type Dick Van Dyke on the Second Life forums, you now get Dick Van **bleep**. Now you might feel that only having part of Dick Van Dyke shows there’s a small chink in armour of the Second Life forum word filter, alas a small chink in the armour would actually be a small **bleep** in the armour, as Perrie Juran discovered when he typed the following:
“Going back to Andrew’s explanation, what it amounts to was that there was a tiny chink in the Viewer that has now opened up into a big gaping hole. The Server is doing it’s job correctly, the Viewer is asleep at the wheel.”
An innocuous looking statement discussing the issue of prims not appearing in the viewer. However what now appears on the forum is:
“Going back to Andrew’s explanation, what it amounts to was that there was a tiny **bleep** (eta: I don’t believe that c.h.i.n.k. got bleeped!) in the Viewer that has now opened up into a big gaping hole. The Server is doing it’s job correctly, the Viewer is asleep at the wheel.”
We’re back knee deep in the silliness of word filters and the silliness exemplified in the Family Guy episode. The worst thing about word filters like this is that they highlight the negative context some words can be used in, whereas if they left them alone, nobody would bat an eyelid.
Word filters applied like this are counter productive, there was nothing wrong with Perrie’s original comment, nobody would have paid attention to the use of the word chink in that context, however the word filters on the Second Life forums don’t do context and therefore draw attention to words like this.
There’s nothing wrong with Dick Van Dyke either, well the dodgy cockney accent, funny dancing and cheesy detective shows aside, but the name in itself is not offensive and really, the Second Life forums should not be censoring words in this fashion, they should leave well alone and allow moderators to deal with context. Goodness knows how Second Life would cope if Dick Van Dyke actually wanted to come and speak, would Rod Humble introduce him as Dick Van **bleep**?
The English language is a rich environment, context is largely king. There are words which are clearly offensive and I have no problem with such words being filtered out but when you filter innocent words because they can be offensive, you’re on very silly ground. I can still recall helping someone move their marketplace listing from Adult to General, their crime was having a Master and Slave system, which they put in their description. Although Master and Slave is a long held technical term, in Second Life terms it can also be used for adult content. Filters based on the lowest common denominator are frustrating rather than helpful.
Let the moderators moderate, over active word filters are not helpful.