Tye has some very good points.

I run a couple of forums on which I've implemented a simple word list filter.

I find that I've backed off to just a few very obvious words. If one of these words show in text I replace with the Times Newspaper approved sustitute and also send myself a message.

Usually the substitution is enough to handle the immediate situation. If when the human (or semi-human) moi reviews the alerts a further action is required then further action is taken. But at this point the permutations of okay versus not okay are too complex for a simple bot to handle.

I've found that the simple substitution has sent a gentle message that certain language is not approved and most folks have either backed off or found a new and less offensive means of responding to each other.

In the few cases where the user was obviously way over the line I chose to implement a ban filter on that user. This was decided and implemented by the semi-human.

Claude