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Autocensoring the "N" Word


Quest Master

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Did you know that the geocaching.com email has an auto-censorship feature? Did you know that they read your email and simply fail to deliver it if it contains something that they don't like? Neither did I...

 

A couple of months ago, I started cross-listing my caches on another geocaching website. It's the one that begins with an "N". I hesitate to mention it by name after discovering by accident that you can't even send a link to it through the GC mail without having the system eat it. That's right. It eats it. There is no warning or explanation. It just fails to deliver the email to the intended recipient. I even get a copy of the email that was supposedly sent but it doesn't go through.

 

I found this out the hard way. I was sending the link to one of my listings on navicache.com to a fellow geocacher that logged a DNF one of my more difficult caches. I was doing this because the navicache listing contains two extra hints that I had routinely given out to others that had DNFed this particular cache. What I didn't realize is that my emails weren't getting though on account of the navicache link being autocensored. I finally got suspicious when I received a request for the promised extra hint just minutes after I had already sent it. We went back and forth a few times before I realized what was going on. In the couse of this discussion, I was thinking that this geocacher must be a complete idiot and he was thinking that I must be a total (profanity removed by moderator) for not giving him the hint that I promised and gave to everyone else. I don't need any help making an (profanity removed by moderator) out of myself, thank you very much.

 

What the heck?! This is an outrage! If this website is going to censor my emails to other geocachers, they should at least tell me about it and offer an explanation instead of simply failing to deliver the email. I think that this nonsense is a disservice to the geocaching communtiy which exists beyond the confines of this website whether they like it or not. What else are they censoring? Are the autocensors referring emails with suspicious content to TPTB so that they can indentify and censure people perceived to be troublemakers? Am I alone in thinking that we should have some degree of privacy when corresponding with fellow geocachers? What does everyone else think?

Edited by mtn-man
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Did you know that the geocaching.com email has an auto-censorship feature? Did you know that they read your email and simply fail to deliver it if it contains something that they don't like? Neither did I...

 

 

My first reaction was that it is gc.com's right to do so, since you are using their servers.

 

However, are you sure about this? Are you certain it is not a overaggressive spam filter at one or both of the ISP's or the recipient?

 

I know that in some of the threads it was mentioned that some ISP's were blocking some emails from gc.

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Did you know that the geocaching.com email has an auto-censorship feature? Did you know that they read your email and simply fail to deliver it if it contains something that they don't like? Neither did I...

 

A couple of months ago, I started cross-listing my caches on another geocaching website. It's the one that begins with an "N". I hesitate to mention it by name after discovering by accident that you can't even send a link to it through the GC mail without having the system eat it.

 

You CAN say "Navicache" in the forums. It's not a bad word. :surprise:

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I just used the GC email system to send an email to my second account. I used the word "navicache" several times and the email did, in fact, get delivered.

 

Edit to add I just tried a link also and it was delivered too.

 

I think the OP is on drugs :surprise:

Edited by Lil Devil
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Did you know that the geocaching.com email has an auto-censorship feature? Did you know that they read your email and simply fail to deliver it if it contains something that they don't like? Neither did I...

 

A couple of months ago, I started cross-listing my caches on another geocaching website. It's the one that begins with an "N". I hesitate to mention it by name after discovering by accident that you can't even send a link to it through the GC mail without having the system eat it.

 

You CAN say "Navicache" in the forums. It's not a bad word. :surprise:

 

This is a privately owned website and i would suppose they have a right to censor and delete anything they feel is not to their liking.

 

Does the Navicache not have their own "contact another player" thing going on? Otherwise, why go back and forth through GC.com? It may not be a big deal or anything but if it's Navicache (or any other geocaching site) related then i would keep it over on the repective site.

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Nope. I'm not on drugs...

 

I have tried it several times over the past week and a half and I have asked others to try it as well. I just tried it again to be sure and I'm getting the same result. Emails without navicache go through, emails with navicache do not. I don't think I'm being signaled :surprise: out but I suppose that's possible.

 

I just used the GC email system to send an email to my second account. I used the word "navicache" several times and the email did, in fact, get delivered.

 

Edit to add I just tried a link also and it was delivered too.

 

I think the OP is on drugs :huh:

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Shortly after I set up an account here I decided I didn't like the name I chose, so I created this new one. The old one still exists, of course.

 

I just sent two messages using http://www.geocaching.com/email/default.aspx, one with the word Navicache and one without, from my current account to the abandoned one. Both of them arrived in the old accounts regular email, without difficulty.

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Shortly after I set up an account here I decided I didn't like the name I chose, so I created this new one. The old one still exists, of course.

 

I just sent two messages using http://www.geocaching.com/email/default.aspx, one with the word Navicache and one without, from my current account to the abandoned one. Both of them arrived in the old accounts regular email, without difficulty.

 

That was also my experience. I think it's more likely that the email is getting filtered by the recipients mail server. I can't come up with a reasonable explanation for why TPTB would kill emails like that anyways. Sounds kind of like "conspiracy theory" thinking to me.

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I just tried to send "NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE!" to myself, and I got this completely and totally UNACCEPTABLE response:

 

You can't send an email to yourself!

 

This is unconscionable! I demand this censorship cease and desist immediately! :surprise:

 

Some people are reporting getting them, some are not. My guess is that it is not geocaching that is the culprit.

 

NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE!

 

Hmmm. Still THERE at least...

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I just tried again and this time the email came through. Why not the first time? Maybe not the N word but a flaw in the system?

 

El Diablo

 

It suddenly started working for me too. Isn't that a strange coincidence? It's probably a good thing that I shared this with a few other cachers before I started this thread because I might otherwise think that I was mistaken or crazy. I strongly suspect that it was easier to turn off the autocensor than it was to explain it.

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If you were coming on my company site, and sending people on my "customer list" links to a competitors product, I would do everything I could to stop it.

 

That being said, like others have noted, I'm not sure censorship is actually occurring here. My spam filter regularly grabs any emails with active links in them...

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I just tried again and this time the email came through. Why not the first time? Maybe not the N word but a flaw in the system?

 

El Diablo

 

It suddenly started working for me too. Isn't that a strange coincidence? It's probably a good thing that I shared this with a few other cachers before I started this thread because I might otherwise think that I was mistaken or crazy. I strongly suspect that it was easier to turn off the autocensor than it was to explain it.

:surprise:

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I just tried to send "NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE!" to myself, and I got this completely and totally UNACCEPTABLE response:

 

You can't send an email to yourself!

 

This is unconscionable! I demand this censorship cease and desist immediately! :surprise:

 

Some people are reporting getting them, some are not. My guess is that it is not geocaching that is the culprit.

 

NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE! NAVICACHE!

 

Hmmm. Still THERE at least...

 

Be careful. Autoemailiizaton can make you go blind.

 

Oh, and the the site won't let you send pictures of Llamas either. Really! Go try it and see!

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I also tried and my email didn't come through either. My opinion is however...that it's their right to censor anything going through their server to their members.

 

El Diablo

 

That's true but it would be a courtesy to bounce the email back and say what the issue is, else you could not rely on the "contact" a geocacher system GC.com has. This system is great because it lets people protect their privacy should they wish to keep their email address private. Plus it lets people send messages like "dude your cache needs maintaince," which I prefer over the NM log.

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I just tried again and this time the email came through. Why not the first time? Maybe not the N word but a flaw in the system?

 

El Diablo

 

It suddenly started working for me too. Isn't that a strange coincidence? It's probably a good thing that I shared this with a few other cachers before I started this thread because I might otherwise think that I was mistaken or crazy. I strongly suspect that it was easier to turn off the autocensor than it was to explain it.

 

Looks like it was resolved.

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Oh, and the the site won't let you send pictures of Llamas either. Really! Go try it and see!

I was laughing at the silliness of this whole thread until I reached this. Now, shock and outrage don't even begin to describe how I feel about this particular travesty. I never thought I would experience any situation so bad that geocide was the only option to me . . . . until now.

 

Goodbye. Forever. :surprise:

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I guess I need to say that I pretty thoroughly tested the possiblity that an autocensor wasn't happening.

 

Like everyone else, I initially believed that this must have been a problem with spam filters or something along those lines because I couldn't believe that there was any reason for geocaching.com to autocensor lowly navicache. My only thought was that it was a relic left over from the days when they used to autocensor it from the forums. Some of you that have been around for a long time will remember that they used to do that. I tried emailing links for a few other websites that might be considered competition but everything I tried went through except for navicache. I got some friends to try it and the same thing happened to them even though they had different email servers and spam filtering schemes. I know what I know and the fact that this situation has abuptly changed from more than a week ago when I first discovered it is highly irregular. I'm not smart enough to know for certain that this isn't some kind of a bizarre coincidence but at this point it will be hard to convince me otherwise. I'm hoping that the website will come clean or help me to understand why my emails didn't go through. I kept copies of most of them just in case they want to investigate whether or not there is a glitch in the system.

 

If geocaching.com does not want for us to send links or urls for competing websites, that's their perogative. I think it's bad policy but I guess we would all have to live with it. What I don't like is not being told that this is not allowed and having my email mysteriosly disappear into cyberspace. I guess that this problem is resovled so long as they don't turn the autocensor back on. This assumes, of course, that there actually is one and that it's not just a figment of my wild imagination.

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Until Jeremy replies with a suitable explanation, I'm going to go on believing the conspiracy theory. (It's much more fun than boring ol' reality.)

 

There was definately a time when that "N" word could not be typed here in the forums, so the possiblility of a conspiracy does exist. I don't have any dates or anything, but it was about the time a certain banned member was ranting about the "N" word all the time.

 

Hey, did anyone ever try to type D-A-M-N (without the dashes) in the forums? It changes to "dadgum" :surprise:

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You know, I will give this "conspiracy" a rating of "SO WHAT!". Last I heard, this is a privately owned site.

 

If it is such a HUGE deal, go to Navicache and use their email system to talk about their site. Why do you need the email system for this site to talk about that site anyway? I find it hysterical that you have to use this site to talk to others about the other site. It is amazing that you can't see the incredible irony of your complaint.

 

:surprise:

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Most likely the problem is this:

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...24&hl=reply

 

Anytime you send email to another user and "DON'T" hide your email address, you have the potential to hit this issue.

 

GC sends out email from other users in a way that most ISP's identify (and yes, they should) as spam. This is an easy fix for gc to fix, but as far as I can tell they don't even want to acknowledge the problem.

 

IF you "hide" your email address when you send those notes, the email will most likely make it through..

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You know, I will give this "conspiracy" a rating of "SO WHAT!". Last I heard, this is a privately owned site.

 

If it is such a HUGE deal, go to Navicache and use their email system to talk about their site. Why do you need the email system for this site to talk about that site anyway? I find it hysterical that you have to use this site to talk to others about the other site. It is amazing that you can't see the incredible irony of your complaint.

 

:surprise:

 

I think that I adequately explained why I was using the geocaching.com email and what I was using it for. It was the only means I had to contact the geocacher who had DNFed the cache on geocaching.com. The navicache link that I tried to send was just a convenient way to pass along an extra hint. I wouldn't have done it this way if I had known that my email was going to disappear into cyberspace on account of there being a navicache link in it. I also wouldn't have done it if I knew that there was a rule prohibiting this and as far as I know there isn't such a rule. It would have saved me and the cacher in question some headaches if geocaching.com had informed me that my email would not be sent.

 

I reiterate that I don't like the idea of my email being censored without my knowledge. I agree that geocaching.com reserves the right to do this but I don't have to like it. I'm left wondering what else they might do. I opened this topic to see if others feel the same way.

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Lot's of angst.

 

yes it's a private site. But yes at one time you Navicache was censored in the forums. My guess and it's a guess was that about the same time it was censored in the email system. Later Navicache was uncensored in the forums and they probably forgot about the email censor until it was brought up. In the forums you can see your post change D-A-M-N to dadgum, but you can't see the email get through so it was a valid issue having caused a valid problem to point them at a clue to find a cache on this site even if the clue was on another site.

 

If they do decide to censor (or what ever it is) some emails it would be nice to know it's happenying so you actually could comply with some of the advice given above. You have to know what not to do to not do it.

 

I'm suprised at all the automatic and uneeded angst.

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :surprise:

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Lot's of angst.

 

yes it's a private site. But yes at one time you Navicache was censored in the forums. My guess and it's a guess was that about the same time it was censored in the email system. Later Navicache was uncensored in the forums and they probably forgot about the email censor until it was brought up. In the forums you can see your post change D-A-M-N to dadgum, but you can't see the email get through so it was a valid issue having caused a valid problem to point them at a clue to find a cache on this site even if the clue was on another site.

 

If they do decide to censor (or what ever it is) some emails it would be nice to know it's happenying so you actually could comply with some of the advice given above. You have to know what not to do to not do it.

 

I'm suprised at all the automatic and uneeded angst.

Frankly, the tone of the first post set the stage. Instead of a rational, well thought out post like yours, the original post paints it as a conspiracy. Now, the person he is trying to talk to comes in here and equates Groundspeak to Nazi Germany.

 

Who is the one with the angst here RK?

 

I think your post is probably exactly what happened. I would also prefer that the site administrators keep working on getting site performance levels increased than coming in and defending posts accusing them of being like the people that ran Nazi Germany.

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :surprise:

 

No...you are not in Nazi Germany. You are in a privately owned web site owned by Groundspeak Inc. The have no obligation to help you forward information about a competing site, or anything else for that matter. If you have a problem with the email service, use your own private email to communicate.

 

Anytime you use this site, you use it at the pleasure of Groundspeak. Of course if you don't like that you can always go to Navicache and use their email server.

 

El Diablo

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Lot's of angst.

 

yes it's a private site. But yes at one time you Navicache was censored in the forums. My guess and it's a guess was that about the same time it was censored in the email system. Later Navicache was uncensored in the forums and they probably forgot about the email censor until it was brought up.

 

I will second that guess. As a matter of fact, it was what I was trying to say, but RK said it much more clearly and concise.

 

I googled that Luther Winston Fortinberry guy. I think he may have some issues there. :surprise:

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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I reiterate that I don't like the idea of my email being censored without my knowledge. I agree that geocaching.com reserves the right to do this but I don't have to like it. I'm left wondering what else they might do. I opened this topic to see if others feel the same way.

I'm glad you spoke your concerns here in the forums. If this really was a censorship problem and Groundspeak remedied it after this, your actions achieved positive results. This thread is still here, and it looks the same as when I first saw it. :huh:

 

Groundspeak, to my knowledge, isn't a malicious organization. :surprise: Just remember the early victims of ID theft who were completely ignored because majority of people denied such a thing was possible. Lessons for the information age...

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :huh:

 

No...you are not in Nazi Germany. You are in a privately owned web site owned by Groundspeak Inc. The have no obligation to help you forward information about a competing site, or anything else for that matter. If you have a problem with the email service, use your own private email to communicate.

 

Anytime you use this site, you use it at the pleasure of Groundspeak. Of course if you don't like that you can always go to Navicache and use their email server.

 

El Diablo

 

This NEVER had anything to do with the competing site "Navicache" except that you can not or could not until now even mention it in a GC e-mail! I posted a DNF on a QM cache listed on GC so I contacted him through GC e-mail for the extra clue. So since the cache in question is listed on both sites he just tried to give me the extra clue that is listed on Navicache site :surprise: AND as far as a "privately owned web site owned by Groundspeak Inc" it seems to me that all of you that pay for premium memberships & all that buy the TB's are the backbone of this site! What would this site be with out all of you that PAY?

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :surprise:

 

No...you are not in Nazi Germany. You are in a privately owned web site owned by Groundspeak Inc. The have no obligation to help you forward information about a competing site, or anything else for that matter. If you have a problem with the email service, use your own private email to communicate.

 

Anytime you use this site, you use it at the pleasure of Groundspeak. Of course if you don't like that you can always go to Navicache and use their email server.

 

El Diablo

 

I would add "Privately owned, COMMERCIAL" website. I think it's insane to expect a company to do anything that would promote competition (even though it's not really even competition, which is why they probably dropped the forum filters)..

 

And this idea that a company is required to share with everyone how their server's are setup and how they filter whatever they filter is absurd. America is not socialist (yet)

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :huh:

 

Godwin's Law? :surprise:

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I'm the one QM is talking about and No the emails were NOT getting filtered by the my mail server!

We tried several times and link or no link as long as he used the correct spelling for Navicache the the e-mail was not delivered! When misspelled it finally came through. I even asked if we were suddenly in Nazi Germany because our e-mails were being read and if you wrote something they the "watchers" did Not like the e-mail would not go through. :P

 

Godwin's Law? :(

 

To avoid Goodwin's law, always check to see if references to "Franco's Spain", or "Tito's Yugoslavia" might not have been more appropriate. Ah, forget it, I see my other attempts at injecting humor in the thread have failed. :(

 

So I'd consider the "email a user" feature to be somewhat of an anti-spam courtesy to the players. This is because if everyone had their email address displayed in their profile, "spam-bots" (programs that crawl websites in search of valid email addresses) would be crawling the website like crazy. I know some people choose to display them, but it's not a good idea. I would disagree with certain words in private emails to other players being censored, if this is indeed the case (and I'm sure the OP and emailee are not lying about what they observed). On the other hand, censored words here in the forums absolutely do exist, and don't seem to bother me so much, being posted in public where everyone (even non-members of the website) can see all.

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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