Is there a way that we can ban certain words from being used on Fluther? (More details inside)

I’m thinking that that would involve system tweaking that is unlikely to happen in the near future. Now that the boys are with Twitter, they can only implement changes on their off hours, and there’s a pretty good list of stuff to be done ahead of that. I agree that this stuff is annoying, but at least it’s easy to spot and flag, unlike occasional spammers that get something going for a while before they’re spotted.

Although we can’t control the content on Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook, that would be very easy to do in Fluther. A lot of chat sites and MMO games have software that continuously scans for certain strings and changes “fuck” to ”****” or completely blocks the message.

Oh! Wow, @HungryGuy , that’s cool, I had no idea. Learn something new every day.

I have seen some legit questions about Tumblr…they often end up orphans though. Stuff like “how do I add a header image on tumblr?” Don’t think we have any jellies with much tumblr expertise.

@HungryGuy Wouldn’t that confuse some people who don’t know whether you used Fuck or Tumblr? The words are almost interchangable.

@HungryGuy Yeah, this site I go to changes fuck to smurf. It even goes as far as to change fucked to smurfed, and fucking to smurfing.

The idea is entirely possible on a site like this one. Not a programmer, I have no idea how it’s done, but apparently it’s really easy.
I totally understand the aggravation that would lead to such an action, and I’ve also never seen anything legitimate asked about tumblr, (although there are some, as @Mariah points out) ) but I still don’t like the idea of disallowing any word. :/

We could make it so that the question is only blocked if both of the words “tumblr” and “follow” appeared in the question title. This would block most tumblr spam but very few, if any legitimate questions.

On my site I have a list of keywords that will get what you post immediately put in the spam cue so it is technically doable.

A simple reg-ex will do it. ^Tumblr$

I don’t like the idea of blocking words. It opens the door to censorship, which is unappealing. It’s easy enough to flag (for us). I don’t know how easy it is for the mods to take care of it.

@Sunny2 :: Censorship isn’t the word you are looking for. It is a private site owned by two people. They can block what they want just like I can kick my cousin out of my house for calling my girlfriend a nigger.

When the government starts blocking the site you can call it censorship.

@Symbeline Holy bat smurf, that’s smurfing ridiculous! Smurf a duck!

I’m assuming something could be done to block certain words, but I’m not sure when Bendrew would have time to do that. I also don’t know that it would be that great of an idea. I know it truly is frustrating, with all the smurfing spam, but what if it was blocked and someone really did have a real question about it? That would kinda suck to not be able to ask something.

Although I must admit I’m loling at @WillWorkForChocolate‘s lovely “smurf” substitution. I just may have to adopt that, myself. Thanks, @Symbeline!

Most of the kids who come here looking for Tumblr followers are just bored – that’s why they’re on Tumblr in the first place. Instead of trying to block them, send them hateful “read the guidlelines” responses or otherwise make them feel unwelcome, why not just tell them “that’s not how we roll” and give them a reason to stay and resolve their boredom issues here.

Because frankly, Fluther is often quite a snooze these days.

^ Well said and sadly true.

We shouldn’t block Tumblr. I have one, I don’t promote it. It’s a real social media site and good questions could actually rise from it. For instance, How do I change the background of my Tumblr. Stuff like that, that is technical and html/css users could help with that.

It’s not hard for us to remove a tumblr question (or twenty), so I’d rather not block what could be a legitimate question. As long as folks flag the self-promotional ones for us, we’ll remove ‘em. It may take a little while if no mods are online, but we’ll get to it, I promise. :)

How about tweaking it so that “Tumblr” gets changed to “My Genitalia”? ;-)

@johnpowell I stand corrected. Thanks.

@CWOTUS I agree, and I’ll feel bad; although all I ever really did was flag them. On that same note though, I believe then, that we should be kinder to people asking about dream meanings, relationships and pregnancy questions and the like. I see these bashed to no end, and I understand why; they’re annoying. Very. But maybe some of those people are really wondering and are hoping Fluther can help, and we’re not setting a very good example of what we claim to be when we just tell em to fuck off. Tell em that’s not how we roll, give em a link to Dream Moods (or Blogger, if all they’re interested in is telling people their dreams, as opposed to getting the meanings), or some relationship advice place, or medical site…there are so many out there.
Not saying I never acted like an ass, myself. But I’ll certainly try to practice what I preach. I had to mention it because I think it totally goes hand in hand with the tumblr kids.

And because last night, I had this dream that a tiger was attacking me. I was fighting it off with an axe but it was no good. He eventually climbed on a high place and roared like a maniac. So on Dream Moods it says that being attacked by a tiger means repressed emotions that you were afraid to face.

So there, that’s my unasked for thoughts about annoying dream questions, but if I repress it, I’ll just keep getting attacked by more tigers. XD

Feel free to rip me to shreds now. :D

ProTip; I don’t believe in dream meanings, but they’re fun to look up. Fuckin jungle cat bastards…

I’ll try to avoid dreaming of you, @Symbeline.