Does the bad word filter automatically apply to usernames?

[NeedCoffee]

We've got a fairly long list of bad words setup in IPB. We want to make sure people cannot register with these words in their choice of user or display name. I presume IPB applies the censor to user names, but I wanted to double check? 

[bfarber]

There is a separate ban filters area where you can ban strings that you do not wish to allow in usernames.

[Nathan Explosion]

Nope, bad word filter is for content posted.

You want Ban Settings:

in there you can add words not allowed to be used in registered names....and it doesn't have an upload option, unlike the bad word filter.

[NeedCoffee]

Is there a logical reason why words you don't want to have posted on the forum are allowed, by default, in user / display names? In other words, unless we manually re-create our censor on this page (Ban Settings) then I can have a username with a swear word in it, post a swear word which would be filtered...!

The pain point for us is that we've got a lot of words in the bad words filter, which we bulk imported via XML, but this is not available in Ban Settings for some reason?

[bfarber]

Reasons aside, the system just doesn't work that way presently. I was only trying to answer your original question. 🙂 

[NeedCoffee]

Haha, fair enough - was just pointing out a fairly major flaw in the current censorship setup.

Any solution to our pain point of now having to duplicate our entire bad word list inside Ban Settings?

[Joel R]

5 minutes ago, NeedCoffee said:

Haha, fair enough - was just pointing out a fairly major flaw in the current censorship setup.

Any solution to our pain point of now having to duplicate our entire bad word list inside Ban Settings?

Get coffee and start typing

[NeedCoffee]

Was more thinking of fixing this oddity by hiring a developer to see if we can just hook in to the existing bad word filter list when a user picks their user name or display name. Would also be good if it applied to custom fields too, like if we had 'interests' or whatever. Ultimately the bad word filter is pretty much full of words we don't want to see anywhere!

One day this might make it in to IPB core, which would be nice. As I say, it's mad that you can register an offensive username and then be censored when posting that same word in a forum post. Perhaps a toggle option to apply bad word filter to unregisterable usernames would be a solution.

PS. I know you're meant to go and re-post/duplicate all of this in the suggestions forum, but tbh I've posted it here which I feel should be enough of a head's up. Maybe a kind mod will make a copy and put it there for me 🙂

[Nathan Explosion]

13 minutes ago, NeedCoffee said:

Was more thinking of fixing this oddity by hiring a developer to see if we can just hook in to the existing bad word filter list. 

I'm actually taking a look at it now myself, to see what the options are.

Looks doable...let's see what I can do.

13 minutes ago, NeedCoffee said:

but tbh I've posted it here which I feel should be enough of a head's up

Don't rely on that though....simply post a new topic in the feedback forum, and link to this topic 😉

[NeedCoffee]

29 minutes ago, Nathan Explosion said:

I'm actually taking a look at it now myself, to see what the options are.

Looks doable...let's see what I can do.

Happy to send a beer donation your way if you can sort this. Over the 16 years we've run our current forum, the users have given us a fairly long list of creative swearwords that we really don't want to have to duplicate again (one by one) in the unregisterable names system.

Edit: I've posted here as advised:

 

[Nathan Explosion]

I do have to chuckle sometimes.....the bad word filter isn't applied at registration, but it is applied when a registered user tries to change their display name.

[Nathan Explosion]

Been playing with this today...turns out that the bad word filter is applied after submission of the account registration. The 'problem' is that there is no front-end processing of this (ie the user name check only checks against the non-registration name list) but when submitted it doesn't fail validation - am working on something for this, but if anyone else wants to jump in then go for it.

[Nathan Explosion]

Pending approval