Is manual username filtering possible?

Help and Feedback Scripting Support
#1

Problem

  1. Individuals with inappropriate usernames are constantly joining my game, in which the moderators of said game spend hours every day having to permanently ban them. Such usernames include:
    [REMOVED]
    etc. you get the gist

  2. Don’t want Discord potentially hammering us for abuse of their services to log bans on a channel given the amount of times users are permanently banned a day.

  3. Don’t want Roblox Staff putting my game under review for harboring inappropriate content (tables with inappropriate words or patterns so users with inappropriate content in their usernames get auto-kicked). The group owner suffers from the actions of us developers and that is not fair to him.

  4. Don’t want to pass usernames through any filter string function of the Chat service, because as we all know, the filtering system isn’t to peak perfection and catches various words that are not harmful or inappropriate; innocent users would be kicked.

  5. I have no way to get rid of the alts. I originally kicked users if they had 1 or more items from the default character, but this was merely a Band-Aid solution as they found out and changed the outfits of the raiding alternate accounts in order to bypass the filter. Innocent users were also being kicked.

Inquiry

So is there any actual way I can stop alts with inappropriate usernames from joining my game, or do I just have to live with this until a solution comes out for username filtering? This is not only disturbing given the names that are being produced by whoever, but it is also a distraction to our (the group’s) user experience in general.

#2

I think when creating an account, the username is put through a filtering process, but I may be wrong.

I don’t see much of an autonomous solution to this as it is simply beyond the Roblox engine in terms of what features we have to use.

Also, about #3, I think Roblox doesn’t really care about the content of scripts as long as people don’t see it.

#3

The usernames are put through a filtering process, but the process is extremely weak. I encourage you to check out the images linked, it would give context to what I’m talking about when I say inappropriate usernames.

Problem with your solution

is that it’s a group game accessible to about 14 individuals (one being an alt and one who’s going to be re-ranked to our group game editing rank after he puts 2FA on), including myself.

As much as the above may work, I want to confirm that I’m allowed to do this. If the owner gets banned due to our mistake, that is greatly unfair to him. He’s already been banned, pending termination (was appealed) because of exploiters and trolls like this, as well as defects within the coding.

#4

I really think there is no way around this.
The simple fact, is you just have to let the bad accounts play. Leave it to the already implemented in-game and website reporting system to get rid of people like this.

You may want to consider contacting Roblox about this.

And what do you mean by he has already been banned?
How did external events affect him? Those would definitely be Roblox’s fault, so you should contact them about that also.

#5

This is your problem. Reaction is their motivation, and banning them is the biggest reaction you can give – especially if you spend all day doing it. I would look into shadowbanning them instead. For instance, you could write a custom command that:

  • Changes their username to some neutral value e.g. User023423940
    • There are a few ways to change character display name listed here
    • Change it in the leaderboard as well w/ a custom leaderboard
  • Mutes them, but allows them to continue seeing their messages so they think everyone else does too
  • Is a silent command so they don’t know you’re reacting to them
#6

In which then they start exploiting or attempting to.

The problem here isn’t to affect everyone, only to those with said inappropriate usernames. Re-read it, this could work if what you meant was the command changes their own username.

It’s hidden.

Mute who? Muting is not an alternate to ridding the place of these alts. Maybe, but they don’t exactly come to talk, just to show off their “amazing” usernames. I’ll look into it.

Can be worked out.

#7

We’d probably spend double time to ban and mass report them for inappropriate content. I’m surprised the ban data store hasn’t exploded over this yet, really.

As in when string filters were missing or exploit attacks were going in full strength before our conversion to Filtering.

I’ll see what I can do though alone, while the username filter isn’t as strong as it once was (?).

#8

As in, what possible outside circumstance could have caused him to get banned?
Someone hacking your game would not make you legible to be banned.

And what I meant by the reporting system thing was to not take any action at all. Leave it to the users to report people.

#9

Pretty sure it had to do with the type of exploits or missing string filters, not entirely sure. He has been banned before though, and the game has gone under review twice.

The only hope for reporting is that the user would get IP banned after reporting enough of their accounts but they’ll just use a VPN and get back to it.

#10

Solved it with @doser225. We have a reliable username filter now, so everything should be good now. All that I hope is that we don’t go under review because of it, since we have a table of words that alts can’t use.