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Some gendered slurs no longer on Wordle’s word list
The (at least three) words you can no longer use on Wordle.
Microsoft temporarily mutes users for 'excessive swearing' in uploaded Xbox One clips
The next generation of consoles are in the wild, and now that the general public has access, they're bumping up against some new restrictions with the way they work. While Twitch is clamping down on its live streams, on the Xbox One side some users have run afoul of XBL policies against foul language in their Upload Studio clips. Microsoft hasn't been specific about what constitutes a violation, but in a statement to TechCrunch it says "excessive swearing" (in Upload Studio, peer to peer communications like Skype are reportedly unmonitored) can lead to some or all Xbox Live privileges disappearing. In this case, it appears to usually manifest as a 24 hour ban on voice communication, which some of those affected first noticed when they tried to use a different app like Skype. We'll see if these policies or the way they're enforced evolve over time (if not, you may be in for some very quiet gaming sessions with your favorite Engadget editors), but for now you might want to tell the world what you think of campers after liberating an uploaded clip from SkyDrive.
The Drama Mamas guide to coping with trolling and profanity
It's the last straw: After a long day toiling in the salt mines, you come home to settle in for some stress-relieving World of Warcraft, only to find yourself transported back to The Barrens –- not only the latest patch's Battlefield Barrens, but the trollish Barrens-style general chat you've come to loathe. Your chat box is scrolling ceaselessly with "Douchebag this!" and "$%^& that!" and you can see that any hope of a restful evening is slipping inexorably beyond your reach. What's a poor profanity-pelted player to do?
Drama Mamas: Overreacting
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. We've got a twofer for you this week. Are these letter writers overreacting? Dear Drama Mamas, Hello! I have recently ran into a problem with my GuildMaster, who we will call C. I was questing in a zone, when one player says in General chat, "He (referring to Sha of Anger) is not up yet." My GuildMaster, who was also in the zone says, "That's what she said. ;D" Now I would have no problem with this, if our guild rules did not say specifically, "Each [GUILD NAME] is held accountable for his or her actions. Everyone is subject to a "three-strike" rule, meaning that an infraction of the above guild rules, and/or doing foolish or thoughtless things that would cause [GUILD NAME] to be seen in a poor light to the general populace of the realm will win you a warning." and one of those above rules include..."Keep chat and Ventrilo chatter PG-rated. Stay away from political, sexual and religious discussions."
Breakfast Topic: What are your guild chat rules?
Recently on Drama Mamas, we discussed guild chat that degenerated into being offensive thanks to the addition of one bigot-mouthed player. Each guild has its own chat policies -- whether written or just assumed. It came from the Blog keeps it PG and tolerant. Our members are from all walks of life, and we respect that. Of course, IcftB has its rules posted in the guild info, so everyone knows how to behave and what to expect from others. Posting rules works well that way. But if no chat guidelines are posted, people can still tell what's appropriate by just seeing what the veterans do. If the topics and language tend toward an R rating and someone gets upset by profanity, that someone is in the wrong guild.
Drama Mamas: How to deal with profanity in Battlegrounds
Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm. I'm not one for the profanity filter. Special characters randomly appearing in public chats don't improve my gameplay experience. Also, it's so easy to get around, so why bother? And honestly, I just don't mind profanity. Now, if there were some kind of hate and trolling filter, I might use that. Ah, just think of how slowly trade chat would scroll ... Hey Mamas, I've been playing since vanilla. The reason I preface my letter with that is because I know the drama that goes on in battlegrounds. Really, I do. But for some reason, I feel it's just gotten so bad lately. People being rude or just trolling isn't anything new. But this is a whole new level of mean, and the offenders act like every little (often just perceived) mistake is a personal slight against them, one from which they will never, ever recover from. This isn't just about one instance either. In literally every battleground, whether we're winning or losing, someone is cursing someone else and causing a ruckus over something very little.
Bulletstorm to feature a mother-hugging profanity filter
It's time once again to play Choose Your Own Analogy! Here's the situation: People Can Fly's Adrian Chmielarz recently addressed concerns about Bulletstorm's frequently obscene dialogue on Twitter, explaining that the game "features optional subtitles, and yes, you can tone the language down if you wish so." (In a followup tweet, Chmielarz suggested one might want to mute the voices and display the profanity in subtitles, say, if the kids could be listening from another room.) Chmielarz clarified to Joystiq that the game will apparently feature options to tone down "both" the voice-overs and subtitles, though it's as yet unclear if that will entail replacement words or a simple censoring device. If the latter, here's where we play the analogy game: Based on the promotional material we've seen so far, we can't help but feel like playing through Bulletstorm with a dirty word filter on will result in more beeps than a ... Car alarm factory Old-timey Morse code station Chiptunes concert Los Angeles traffic jam Beeper convention Chiptunes concert held at a car alarm factory on the same block as the beeper convention
Google's Nexus One censors your voice-to-text input, we #### you not
It'd be kinda funny if someone was live-bleeping your profanity, right? Sure, but five minutes later you'd sober up to regret and lingering annoyance. Turns out the Nexus One does it for real, courtesy of Google's speech-to-text engine -- it replaces notorious curses like the F and S words with a '####,' which is a more dramatic take on the Zune HD's now-obsolete Twitter censorship. As silly as this sounds, Google has come up with a good reason: We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent. Kudos for caring, but it wouldn't hurt to have an on / off option either -- after all, it's not like we're asking for pinch-to-zoom here, and we'll promise to use a swear jar.
WoW Rookie: Filter out the #$%!
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.Hey, isn't that the same screenshot we used for WoW Rookie just two weeks ago? Indeed it is, faithful readers – because frankly, "Who wants my man meat?" is the perfect illustration for today's topic.The World of Warcraft is your refuge at the end of a long, hard day – and the last thing you want to see rolling across your screen is the kind of lowbrow posturing that's given Barrens chat its notorious reputation. Or perhaps you'd like to let the kids try their hands at WoW, but you don't want them soaking up the rough language that seems to turn up more and more frequently in busy city Trade and General channels.It's time to take charge of your game chat.
Teach your iPhone to swear, take two
Erica Sadun has written an article over at Ars all about teaching your touchable pocket pal some nasty habits. If your language is generally more "explicit," or you just have a need for the iPhone (or iPod Touch) to learn someone's last name, then take heart, ye weary iPhone typists! We previously covered TJ Luoma's tip that involved adding a new contact whose name was a word that does not appear in the system dictionary; TJ has since updated the tip to note that you can include the target words outside the contact name and the approach still works. Erica has suggested a slightly different approach that does not require you to salt the address book with contact fluff. This is especially useful if you have young children or mothers who might happen to peruse your contacts. The general assumption is that after correcting the auto-correct, the system will eventually add whatever it is you're typing to the dictionary. As it turns out, not all apps are created equal in terms of updating the dictionary with new words. I won't spoil the surprise, but I will tell you that the Notes app is not where you should conduct your keyboard-training session. This excellent tip can also be used for teaching your tactile friend some less abrasive words that are not in the dictionary. Erica's article walks through the procedure for updating the built-in dictionary on an iPhone or iPod Touch. If you happen to have jailbroken your device and installed SSH, she shows you how to directly access the dictionary. Hit the read link for the full scoop on how to update your dictionary with your off-color language or otherwise unique verbiage.
iPhone: pottymouth friendly
Steve must have been a sailor in a former life, because it's been a while since we've seen a phone dictionary come preloaded with so many US swears. The iPhone even supports multiple forms of the mother of all curses -- truly, a versatile word for a versatile phone. Now go wash your mouth out with soap, mister.Supports F*ck F*cks F*cker F*cked Sh*t Microsoft Does not support Motherf*r Zune We're sure you and your foul mouth will have plenty more words you'll want to try -- leave 'em in comments, but mind the minors, ok?
When good toys go bad II: toy cellphone botches "six"
There's acceptable ways to drop the H-Bomb and F-Bomb, and there's "when good toys go bad." Presumably turning a joyous, thrilling Christmas morning into one giant moment of awkwardness, a South Carolina mum was aghast when her son's toy phone, which was purchased from K-Mart as an innocent symbol of motherly love, vocalized "profanity" (mmkay?) instead of "the number six" when pressed. The phone reportedly shouts out numbers when the respective keys are mashed, but unfortunately for Brandy Cunningham, "six" didn't exactly turn out like it should have. Leading to eventual embarrassment, she claims her son has repeated the taboo vocabulary in places like "church" and "the grocery store," leaving the parent in quite a predicament. She even purchased yet another one just in case the phone was a one-time mishap, but found that not to be the case. A spokeperson for Sears / K-Mart has assured everyone that the company is investigating the incident and the toy itself, as it doesn't "intend to sell children's products that contain profanity." It's just a hunch and all, but we think somebody in the manufacturing line is going to have a little explaining to do if all this proves accurate.
Speech-to-whimsically-colored-text
Nintendo, attempting to maintain their family-oriented image, has taken great caution to avoid standard voice chat in their online offerings...at least between people not firmly established as friends. Services such as Xbox Live might embrace the liberal cursing of prepubescent punks, but in a purely audio-based communciation system, it's almost impossible for a system to filter out profanity in real-time. According to my mother's sister's friend's uncle an IGN Insider forum poster (who has some street cred, thanks to a previous accurate analysis of the internal Wiimote speaker) and a recent patent, Nintendo will be implementing a speech-to-text program to avoid such problems. In addition to standard word recognition, the program will also register the tone and volume of your voice to change the text into various sizes and colors. "STFU n00b" will be in red, presumably. By converting audio data to simple text, the Wii will very easily be able to filter and/or change any words that are flagged in the system. Hopefully, the system will allow parents and users to modify the filters, and perhaps just give an optional regular voice-to-voice setting as well. [via Joystiq]
