As part of our recent
investigation of Katie's admissions, we discovered that she had previously called herself a pedophile but the incident went undiscovered because she did so in a wall of text on a rarely-used channel. The fact of the matter is, our Discord server has grown to dozens of text channels, but we only have a handful of ops to moderate them It's impossible for us to read every message that's posted on the server. Obviously, we need help in that area, and I'm pleased to announce that we now have it.
Our Discord bot, Zaphyr, has been updated with new auto-moderation tools to flag when something is posted that may need an op's attention, based on how likely we feel a word might be associated with a problematic situation. For words that might but probably aren't being used in a situation that needs our attention, Zaphyr will log it for ops to review at their convenience. For words that are more likely to be, Zaphyr will ping the ops so we can investigate it ASAP. Finally, for words that are most likely to be, Zaphyr will not only ping ops but put the poster in time-out: restricting them to a single time-out channel with ops until it can be investigated.
As social media has shown, things can slip through the cracks even with auto-moderation. For that reason, if you see something that breaks the rules or might need looked at by an op, please continue to ping @Operators on the server. However, this will go a long way in alerting us to situations that may need our attention, and is a great step in moving on from a situation that has been painful for many of us.
I would like to thank
@Wuufu for implementing this feature so quickly. I know how busy he is and I appreciate that he took some of that time to put it together. I would also like to think AJ/Kessekk for tackling the painstaking task of making time-out work in every channel with Discord's quirkly permissions setup,
@Michi and
@Laurentus for setting up the initial word list and their extensive testing, and the many members of our Discord server who helped to test:
@Red Mones,
@Mathyland,
@Ruguo,
@Doc,
@Gattoartico,
@Sapphiron, and
@Chanku.
PS: Since testing is over, saying "Govindia" will no longer put you in time-out. Please quit trying.
Edit: I just remembered that Laurentus originally came up with the idea to have Zaphyr flag words, so thanks to him for that as well.
