What is censorship ?

Wikipedia wrote:Censorship is defined as the removal and withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body.

Typically censorship is done by governments, religious groups or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of official secrets, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship when it remains within reasonable bounds. Because of this, the term "censorship" often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy.

Censorship is closely related to the concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. When overused, it is often associated with human rights abuse, dictatorship, and repression.

The term "censorship" is often used as a pejorative term to signify a belief that a group controlling certain information is using this control improperly or for its own benefit, or preventing others from accessing information that should be made readily accessible (often so that conclusions drawn can be verified).

In the context of your forums, of course it's not a limitation of the expression freedom. The censorship is simply used to prevent the use of certain words or nicknames considered as vulgar, offensive, pornographic, etc. Briefly, the censorship is a complement. which can help you to respect the Forumotion.com's Terms of services, as you are responsible of your board's content.

Activate the word censors

It is really simple to activate this feature :

Admin Panel General Admin Tab Word Censors tab ( ) - Word censoring / User censoring

As soon as the first word / username has been entered, the censor functions on the whole board.

How to disactivate the word censor ?

Admin Panel General Admin Tab Word censors tab ( ) - Word censoring / User censoring

As soon as all your words / usernames are removed, the censor is disactivated on the whole board.

Using the word / user censoring

First, click on "Add new word" Then you will see these two texts : "Word" and "Replacement".

The "Word" is the text to censor and the "Replacement" is the text which will replace it.

For example, if you want to replace "Banana", you will write this word in the "Word" field, and will write "Ban***" in the "Replacement" field for example.

In the case of the username censoring, you just have to enter this word in the "Word" field (the username censoring is located in the "User censoring" tab)

*The censoring doesn't function only in messages, but also in topic titles. However, it is disabled on your homepage, in the category descriptions and on your portal.



The wildcard's role (*)

Wildcards allow to censor a serie of words. They can be located before or after the word.

For example, when you use the wildcar before the word "test" (*test), you can also censor the word "Fastest".

When you use the wildcard after the word "test" (test*), you can also censor the word "Testament".

When you use the wildcard before and after the word "test" (*test*), you can also censor the word "Contestant".

Replacing the words

All characters can be used for censorship. However, I advise you to use the * as the censor character, as the word stays comprehensible, even censored. So, if you censor the word "Banana" :

With the «*» :

I like Bana**

With word such as "Censored" :

I loke Censored !

So, the word becomes uncomprehensible and this might be disadvantageous : The administrator won't know at which degree the member shoud be punished becose the word has been fully censored. Other disadvantageous cases might also happen.

*Capitals and small letters :

A technician wrote:The word censor works with words in small letters as well as words in capitals.

Be careful to the words you choose !

This feature censors the whole words. It won't take into account the words having no space, etc. Think twice before censoring a word. For example, if you censor the word "ass", the part where this word is located will also be censored : "assistance"

Using the keyword censoring

The keywords are part of a module in the portal. Even if this module is an interesting feature, it might happen that members type unwanted words for example, to harm the forum (or not). In this case, it iw possible to censor these words via :

Admin panel General Admin Tab Word censors tab ( ) - Keywords Censoring

Then, you just have to find the unwanted word and to click on the button to censor it

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Written by mamboule, translated by Katt