How to implement a profanity filter in RoR?

Question

I am developing a social web application with RoR. I realized that it's probably a good idea to prevent users from inserting rude or profane language into comments or posts.

Do you know any solution or plug-in that help me prevent something like this?

Answer 1

The correct term you're looking for is a profanity filter (edited). Here are some previous discussions on this topic:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/273516/how-do-you-implement-a-good-profanity-filter
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24515/bad-words-filter
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/259610/profanity-filtering-profanity-dictionaries-scunthorpe-problem-profanity-generat

Answer 2

Actually the best solution is to hire at least one moderator.

The worth thing that plugins can do is to "encrypt" normal words thinking that part of the word is "rude word".

Answer 3

Hire a moderator or get a volunteer if it's going to be that big a problem. As far as the programming end, just hope your users never need buttistance.

Answer 4

There's fu-fu, which is pretty heavyweight. Have not used it myself.

Also, validates_decency_of, which I've tinkered with. It's very simple - just tells you whether a word "is decent" based on George Carlin's 7 dirty words.