Smarten up the profanity filter: Base64 detection

[Roxor128]

We've just run into some trouble with the profanity filter in the Factorio forums. The stupid thing is modifying blueprint strings, randering them useless for use in-game. The strings are Base64-encoded, and just by sheer dumb luck have eneded up including something the filter doesn't like.

Please smarten it up to recognise Base64-encoded text and go to sleep when it hits it.

[Roxor128]

Socialist Butterfly eredeti hozzászólása:

Yes... so because developer x chose to make it share in that way, valve should have to waste their dev time to accommodate it, even though those developers specifically choose NOT to use the no cost assets available to them to make it a non-issue.

Valve chose be unusual in how they run their forums and include a profanity filter. This problem is on their shoulders, not the Factorio developers. Their system works just fine on a normal forum. Valve's forum isn't normal, so it's on Valve to work around the oddities they chose to include.

[Moderate my posterior.]

It really isn't, nor should it be.

Fortunately we both know they are not going to take this thread seriously.

[Satoru]

Nearly every forum has a profanity filter

Steam is not magically the only site to have invented it

Yes it starts with a 0 whoopee doo that's not a header

So any text that starts with 0 can bypass the language filters? Yes that's an astounding idea

The devs have tools to make users lives easier to exchange game information. That is a dev problem not a problem with the word filter

[Roxor128]

Satoru eredeti hozzászólása:

Nearly every forum has a profanity filter

Steam is not magically the only site to have invented it

Well, that's certainly contrary to my experience. I think you're making things up.

Yes it starts with a 0 whoopee doo that's not a header

So any text that starts with 0 can bypass the language filters? Yes that's an astounding idea

Okay, fine, make it "starts with a 0 and is more than 30 characters long". You're not going to find any of these codes shorter than that.

Or you could define a code tag ending with "lang=base64]" to be the header.

Or you could have it check if the great big long block of text with no spaces is all 7-bit ASCII characters.

Hell, use a neural network and train it to recognise the difference between a page normal text and a page of Base64 code. Spotting the difference between a block of actual text and a block of encoded data is exactly the kind of task they're good at (as are humans). I've seen video of a simple neural network which could tell the difference between random text and people mashing their keyboards, so it's certainly possible.

Your constant "no" to everything makes you sound ridiculously paranoid given the issue. If it were security we were talking about, it'd be justified, but we're not. Nobody is going to be hurt if the Base64 encoding of some data happens to include a so-called "bad word". Hell, most people probably won't even notice it amongst the great big block of seemingly-random ASCII and will either skip it or copy-and-paste it whole to try it out in the game.

The devs have tools to make users lives easier to exchange game information. That is a dev problem not a problem with the word filter

Except they don't make it easier. They don't work between Steam and non-Steam versions. Any developer who wants to make stuff work between Steam and non-Steam versions of their game needs to use something else.

The Factorio devs came up with a very portable and reasonably compact approach of a Base64-encoded, gzipped, text version of the game's blueprint data.

Valve has the Steam Workshop, which is about as portable between distribution platforms as DirectX is between operating systems.

[Spawn of Totoro]

All this, but you have not posted any examples.

[Roxor128]

Spawn of Totoro eredeti hozzászólása:

All this, but you have not posted any examples.

Here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/427520/discussions/0/1291817837624473166/

Happy?

[Spawn of Totoro]

Roxor128 eredeti hozzászólása:

Spawn of Totoro eredeti hozzászólása:

All this, but you have not posted any examples.

Here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/427520/discussions/0/1291817837624473166/

Happy?

Yep. I'll ask and see if there is a way, but due to the amount of text, a pastebin may be a better option like cSg|mc-Hotsauce suggested.

Maybe the developer can set it to a saved file instead of a text format though. May be better overall as well.

My apologies for the misunderstanding. I had thought you were saying people were using a Base64-encoded text to bypass the filter.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

edit: these seem like the most random strings ever to filter out

edit: oh okay these seem like they're cheat (or cheating community) names

edit: censored strings removed