FilterStringAsync too strict compared to regular filtering

I know this isn’t really a ‘bug’ but…

https://twitter.com/ElleFunt12/status/746907766128775169
https://twitter.com/Eyiss0/status/746801883595972609
https://twitter.com/Cabadabadoo/status/746900845367803905
https://twitter.com/shadowuriel21/status/746917271302377472

People literally can’t use the chat to trade because some of the items in the game are censored (for example, ‘Imbued’ like the one tweet mentioned). This is quite detrimental to my game considering it’s very social/trading based.

I notices that so instead of filtering everything for public I just filtered for the player writing it, if that makes sense.

I don’t know what you mean, I use this:

And put the PlayerFrom and PlayerTo.

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You can post things that need improving here
http://devforum.roblox.com/t/this-thread-is-the-place-to-post-review-requests-about-chat-text-filtering/25717/109

My bad, I was not aware of that thread; However, I think my case is specific enough to warrant it’s own thread. It seems like that thread is used for “I just said _____ and it got moderated”

Edit: Also it seems like it is specific to FilterStringAsync, so even more reason to be it’s own thread in Bug Reports.

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The title of the thread ghostleader just linked to suggests otherwise. They even put emphasis on “is” to make clear that’s where this kind of stuff goes

Not only is it not a ‘review request’, but it’s specifically talking about the function FilterStringAsync, not standard chat, text, or comments.

You can gather a list of things that are currently getting blocked that shouldn’t be and post them on the thread that has been linked. Everything related to filtering really should go there. They’ve improved on a ton of specific cases on that thread where text was getting filtered erroneously already.

I don’t see how that’s feasible. I can’t just type every single word in the dictionary to find out which are pointlessly censored.

You’re talking about how specific words are getting blocked which prevents trading in your game, so surely you can just check which of your item names are getting blocked erroneously and post those there. You already have these tweets which have 2 examples.

Screenshot_31.png
Screenshot_32.png

really

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What do you want me to do about it? (You replied to my post)

Should post about it here like mentioned:
http://devforum.roblox.com/t/this-thread-is-the-place-to-post-review-requests-about-chat-text-filtering/25717

Didn’t mean to reply to you

I feel like it was appropriate to reply to him. To expect me to go through every single word in the dictionary and find which ones are unreasonably censored is absurd. Your post is a great example of words that are censored for no reason.

I believe the issue at the moment is that FilterString uses a very poor whitelist and we shouldn’t be expected to use it until this is resolved.

Yeah… I don’t know what kind of algorithm ROBLOX is using to censor words(because it clearly isn’t a blacklist), but it decides to censor a lot more than it needs to.

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It really is! Notice that berezaa also posted it on the other thread, which the moderation staff checks for filter improvements regularly. This helps improve the filter rather than just saying it blocks the wrong things without giving specific examples.

The filter is not a whitelist nor a blacklist. They use a custom filter that makes use of Community Sift which doesn’t just scan for individual words but tries to find the semantics behind a sentence and filter based on that. That’s why a particular word may be blocked in one sentence but not be blocked in a different sentence. It’s really important to report issues so that they can try to improve the filter.

No one is expecting you to go through the dictionary, but it seemed like you had specific examples based on your OP. I guess not though.

All I know is people are telling me my game sucks because of the filter. I don’t have much knowledge of what’s getting filtered.

The thing with Nikilis’ game is that you have to use FilterStringAsync for any user-generated text that is shown to other players (custom chat GUI, pet names, etc)

People are having difficulty talking to each other about the game that they’re in because the names of skins, players, etc. get censored in the chat.

I also told him to post a bug report about it because FilterStringAsync appears to be even more strict than the filtering in place on the default ROBLOX chat GUI. I haven’t verified this by comparing filtering between the two, but it sounds like applying FilterStringAsync is legitimately breaking his game from a social standpoint.

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cc @spotco @ReeseMcBlox

Thanks @zeuxcg.

All the filtering functions are using the same base filtering system. FilterStringAsync determines what to show based on the player who said the text, and what’s best for the player who is reading it. Don’t send the same player for both fields.

FilterStringAsync should give users the exact same experience as the default ROBLOX chat gui. It was designed to do so.

If you’re using FilterStringForBroadcast then all the results will be stricter. It’s stricter because every user in the game, or across servers if you’re doing that kind of shout, is seeing the same thing.

If you’re using the old FilterStringForPlayerAsync, it’s deprecated, and is only returning stricter results now.

What I’m reading here is not that the functions are bugged (though we will confirm), but that the community rules seem too strict across the board. That’s an ongoing discussion here at the office.

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