25 Jan, 2012, Trepko wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
Has anyone ever coded/tried to code in an auto enforcer for channels and such? I have a SMAUG derivative as everyone known as one of the "DBS" clones called Clash for Power. And I don't believe in having admins around to enforce channels, so I was wondering if anyone ever had the same thought and coded in an automatic channel enforcer that would dish out silences/punishments for things like spamming a channel or using certain swear words.
25 Jan, 2012, Zeno wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Well, Saga had could block swear words couldn't it? Just change that code to instead punish the player instead of blocking out the swear.

Spamming is a whole 'nother beast though.
25 Jan, 2012, Davion wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
Trepko said:
Has anyone ever coded/tried to code in an auto enforcer for channels and such? I have a SMAUG derivative as everyone known as one of the "DBS" clones called Clash for Power. And I don't believe in having admins around to enforce channels, so I was wondering if anyone ever had the same thought and coded in an automatic channel enforcer that would dish out silences/punishments for things like spamming a channel or using certain swear words.


A MUD I used to work on would track channel output. The channel code was similar to the snippet I have posted here, where it all routes through one main function. It would track a players last speech. If it was less then 2 seconds ago, it'd increment a counter, if it was longer then 2 seconds, it would set the counter to 0. If the counter hit say.. 8, it would automatically lock your channel privileges.
25 Jan, 2012, Runter wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I've seen muds that automatically silenced players for an hour or so programmatically when spam was detected. Although, I must confess I more often saw non-spamming players getting silenced than actual spam. For example, on one mud it tested if the content of messages was mostly the same of the last 5 messages. And if so, issued the public shellacking. Almost always this seemed to happen when someone was ceremoniously congratulating players on achievements with some standard word like "grats" or "woo" or some such.

For swear words my recommendation is just black listing and replacing them with asterisks for players who admitted to be under the age of 13 in your sign up process. ;)

Either way, definitely don't recommend automated punishments for what amounts to decorum. It's something humans should do if it should be done at all.
25 Jan, 2012, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I agree Runter, auto censorship never works fine, and can be worked around by humans anyway once they detected how it worked. In the end it only annoys regular people.
25 Jan, 2012, Hades_Kane wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
We used to have a language filter, and anytime any of the "banned" words were found in the string, it turned the entire public channel post to a "I shouldn't use foul language" or whatnot and booted the player off the MUD.

Of course, a word like "ass" (which probably wasn't blocked) could be written a s s or @ss or @$$ or a$$ etc. in order to be gotten around the filter. Pretty much any word you might want to ban is trivial to get around and get th exact same meaning across, so the best I can say to trying to put in an effective language filter is "good luck", because if someone wants to curse, they're going to and there's no possible way to block all possible combinations of ways people will get around it.

I still use our language filter code, but instead of words, I've blacklist certain color codes from public channels, such as blinking text, beeps, and background color codes… and it no longer kicks someone off of the MUD for using it, it just lets them know not to use those color codes on a public channel.

There are numerous ways to attempt a spam filter, so yes to that, but the effectiveness of it might be another thing entirely.
25 Jan, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
I have an autoblocker that silences spammers. Added it after the owner of another mud waited until I'd gone to bed, then logged on a dozen bots to spam all the public channels. The second night he tried again, and the autoblocker triggered after about 2-3 seconds.

Messages on public channels containing web/mud addresses are also blocked, unless the player has played for more than an hour. Duplicate messages are blocked as well.

I don't change any of the actual message strings except for special occasions (April 1st, Talk Like A Pirate Day, etc).
25 Jan, 2012, Ssolvarain wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
I logged in during Talk Like a Pirate Day. That was awesome >.>
25 Jan, 2012, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Hehe must be fun, I have a drunk talk system as well for our drunk chars :)
26 Jan, 2012, Hades_Kane wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
Hehe must be fun, I have a drunk talk system as well for our drunk chars :)


Yeah, those are fun :)

We have that, and I modified that to go with our speech impediment flaw, which has a handpicked set of characters that are replaced :p
0.0/10