Ovarit has strict "no slurs" rules.

There has been a recent discussion about an uptick in slurs against transgender-identifying people.

In addition to trans slurs, misogynistic slurs that are commonplace, due to how commonplace misogyny is, are sometimes nonchalantly used in posts, especially by new or infrequent users. Sometimes this sucks, because a post will end up getting removed that was a decent discussion, it just offhandedly used a slur against women like the b-word.

I propose that when a user hits the submit button on a post or comment they wrote, if there are slurs in the text, they get a warning:

Your post appears to contain slurs, which break Ovarit's rules.
The following slurs have been detected in the text: "xyz"

You may continue to submit the post and risk post removal if the post is found to break the rules, or press cancel and revise your post.

[Cancel] [Submit anyway]

Something like that?

I think this has a few benefits:

1. Let's be honest, people often don't read the rules. This warning provides a user with a "no slurs" rule reminder and a chance to fix their post.

2. Because users are reminded of the rule, if they fix their post before submitting, there is less slurs seen on Ovarit, less users needing to report posts, less reports, and less work for moderators.

3. It helps remind new users that yes misogynistic slurs are still slurs. The b-word in specific seems to be a tough one for some users sometimes.

There are some limitations on this approach, mainly if people want to censor the slur with asterisks, then it won't get caught unless the slurs dictionary also accounts for censored versions of slurs. At that point, I think it's clear that if somebody is using a censored slur that they are aware of Ovarit's "no slurs" rule and are intentionally trying to skirt it.

My reason for suggesting only a warning and not a complete refusal to submit the post is because I assume there may be cases where a slur is quoted in a work and the user is analyzing the work? I'm not sure the extent of Ovarit's "no slur" rule in that context. Also, the technical point about this possibly being a client-side feature.

Technical stuff:

I don't have much web development experience, but I assume this could be a client-side feature using JavaScript? So then no server utilization is required. Of course, if a user has JavaScript disabled that would mean the slur checking would not go through, but since it's just a warning and not a complete post prevention, then it's not as much of a big deal, I think. I am assuming most users do not have JavaScript disabled.