Automatic Actions based on Words found in posts

system · April 26, 2021, 5:00pm

New for 1.9 is the ability to take some actions based on watched words found in a post.

Block the post at the time it is submitted. User sees a message saying they’ve used a word that’s not allowed.
Flag the post as inappropriate, but allow it to be submitted.
Censor the words, which replaces the censored_words site setting being removed by this feature.
Require Approval of the post, hiding it until staff reviews it.
Tag the post automatically. 1 or more tags can be added.

There’s a max of 1000 words per action. In practice, “bad word lists” I found rarely contain more than a few hundred.

* can be used as a wildcard.

Found in Admin, the navigation is similar to the settings.

By default, the words are hidden. Checking the “show words” checkbox will display them and allow you to delete them. Using the search field will also reveal any matching words.

sam · July 26, 2017, 7:20pm

Are staff bypassed here? TL4?

For staff it would be kind of weird to require approval by same staff member.

I am tempted to put a “require approval” on TL0 that have @sam in the post

neil · July 26, 2017, 7:38pm

Staff posts bypass these checks, but not TL4.

codinghorror · July 29, 2017, 12:27am

We should definitely move this into Logs, as in “Screened Words” (philosophically speaking, that’s what we’re doing, right?) I don’t really think this deserves its own top level grouping.

rizka · September 28, 2017, 4:42pm

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/41c3941c4cf0caa13fe02c1d61cf7dd059b10d44#diff-74e2124f43157511de446b1deb7cb053

Thank you @eviltrout! Super useful for languages like Finnish.

Mark_Schmucker · March 25, 2021, 10:04pm

There’s no way to use this with PM’s, right?

(There is potential in our group for someone to PM fraudulent instructions for wiring money, so we might watch for the words “wire” and “ABA”.)

ondrejj · March 25, 2021, 10:31pm

I’d recommend adding those words to ‘flag’ as this covers both PMs and public topics.

Mark_Schmucker · March 26, 2021, 1:08am

This is not working for me. I’m testing by posting in a public category- not a PM. Blocking and Replacement work. Flagging and Require Approval do not work- the post appears immediately, and nothing shows up on the Review Queue.

ondrejj · March 26, 2021, 8:32am

How are you testing it? Some of these filters don’t apply to staff users (admins and moderators).

Mark_Schmucker · March 26, 2021, 9:27am

I was testing as admin. It does work as expected for non-staff users. Also confirmed “flag” does work on PMs (for non-staff).

Mark_Schmucker · March 27, 2021, 3:38am

[EDIT]: It does work if I follow the prompt and enter a replacement string of either “example” or “https://example.com”. But not with mixed or markdown. Is there any way to support mixed or markdown?

I’ve decided to use the “replace” action. I would like to replace a watched word with a url, so the watched word becomes a link to a warning. This seems like a nice solution because it doesn’t require moderator action.

But the replacement string does not get displayed as a link- just as raw markdown. Thinking that it might not be cooked properly, I tried “Rebuild HTML” and that had no effect.

Mark_Schmucker · March 30, 2021, 9:08pm

Posted the request in #marketplace.

dgtal1 · April 24, 2021, 10:41am

Hi all,
Looks like this is obvious, but for some reason I can’t find this Watched Words in my discourse instance:

Do I need to enable it somewhere? It’s missing currently. It’s a fresh install. I’m setting it up and wanted to apply some basic moderation settings, but I can’t find thi super useful feature…

Please help! My Discourse is 2.7, my own docker installation setup with your awesome guide.

ondrejj · April 24, 2021, 11:06am

Hello

The watched words are now located in admin > customise

cc @neil the image needs changing.

dgtal1 · April 24, 2021, 10:48am

Thank you very much!

neil · April 26, 2021, 2:06pm

Image is updated, thank you.