Guild Wars 2

Newb question. I see people slinging it around the forums like as in ‘thats just too kitten long’ or ‘thats a really kitten build’. What does it mean and is there an origin/reason why it means what it does?

Kitten is just what the forums language filters put in place of whatever swear/obscene word they had there. Don’t worry, I had the same question!

Lots of folks had the same question, devs figured it was more amusing than just a bunch of asterisks.

I dislike language filtering, but I know sometimes it’ not up to them. So they get a pass from me, because at least they did it in a way that occasionally makes amusing sentences.

I would personally rather see a bacon filter but I hear some people prefer fuzzy little creatures than epic foodstuffs, to each their own I guess.

Lil Puppy.5216:

I would personally rather see a bacon filter but I hear some people prefer fuzzy little creatures than epic foodstuffs, to each their own I guess.

Why does your name involve a different type of fuzzy little creature instead of an epic foodstuff?

lol that’s funny, I guess I never noticed the kitten thing before.
It would be hilarious to see someone say “You’ve gotta be kitten kidding me!” LOL

But is it allowed to mention that for foreigners (like me), asterisks are much better to understand than “kitten”? I have to go through many possibilities:
- maybe this strange word has a meaning but is not listed in my dictionary,
- maybe it’s misspelled and has a meaning, so I have to check for similar words throughout my dictionary,
- or maybe it’s filtered, then all this dictionary checking will be for nothing.
An * is less ambigous, so I (as a foreign guest here) would beg you to change the replacement. It’s time consuming and annoying now.

It is an english forum so foreigners not comfortable with english can expect some confusion from time to time.

Once you read a thread like this one you become aware that kitten is the filter word and will know what it means when you see it in other threads.

They should maybe have a tooltip on the filtered word whenever kitten is used to replace foul language so that on hover anyone will know that it is a replacement word. Or even just a hyperlink to a thread like this one.

CC Meinke.2749:

Before the discussion starts once again: It may happen that a word or part of a word is replaced even though doesn’t have an insulting context.
In this case, we apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

I’ve seen that happen. In every case it looks like the filter is not going after a forbidden word directly. Instead it’s going after an attempt to bypass the filter.

Going after the forbidden words directly I can understand. Threads get heated, people get angry, then swear without thinking about it. Filtering the accidental swears saves the moderators a lot of work.

What I don’t understand is trying to filter people who are trying to bypass it. As I see it, anyone bypassing the filter is intentionally breaking the forum rules. Even if there weren’t rules against bypassing the filter, the filter itself is still an implicit rule of the forum. Also, if they are determined to bypass the filter, they are going to bypass it.

It seems much better to relax the filter so it only catches accidental swearing while cutting down on false positives. If someone is intentionally bypassing the filter, treat them like you would treat anyone else who breaks the forum rules: Warnings, followed by bans.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

It seems much better to relax the filter so it only catches accidental swearing while cutting down on false positives. If someone is intentionally bypassing the filter, treat them like you would treat anyone else who breaks the forum rules: Warnings, followed by bans.

I disagree, I think keeping the filter strict on the forums helps catch far more of the ‘naughty’ people and any residual effect (collateral damage) is easily overlooked because they are just words on a forum.

You could argue that ‘they are just words on a forum’ is a reason to remove or relax the filter but that would be ignoring the negative effect that allowing the intended filtered words would have.

If you find “kitten” confusing, you should avoid the German forums – their filter word is “liebsche” which isn’t even a word…

It is also not an excuse for swearing, just like like having a profanity filter in-game isnt an excuse for swearing.

Some people forget to read between the line…

Example:

“This kitten annoying bug is getting me kitten killed.”

Bluestone.7106:

It is an english forum so foreigners not comfortable with english can expect some confusion from time to time.

Yes, I know, and I live with it. But in this case it’s not sort of a natural law but somthing another human being can change, and I can’t see reasons why he should not. So I’m begging for it. That’s all.

@ pmnt: I know… sight

Well it makes no sense to people who are native English speakers too so there is no difference from that stand point.

I love swears being turned into “kitten”. Much more amusing and interesting then silly *’s.

I wish it did it in-game too!

Katz.5143:

Well it makes no sense to people who are native English speakers too so there is no difference from that stand point.

Though it’s not hard for an english speaker to figure it out from the context of its occurrences.

I find myself tempted to actually type ‘kitten’ for effect these days, when I’m uncertain about how to phrase something without bad words or when I want to emphasise something :P

The use of the word “kitten” as a replacement in these forums is one of the amusing pros I use as an example when convincing friends to play the game.

Ha! All this time I thought “kitten” was just some MMO slang. I’d almost pegged it as a derogatory term for newbies who got lot’s of help (like gifts of gear from a friend).

I can just imagine some april fools day or something the forum servers will replace every occurrence of the word kitten (filtered or otherwise) with a random image from a database of over 100 pictures of cute kittens.

After all, this is the internet, it’s a series of tubes full of cats, finding 100 pictures of cute kittens could probably be done over a smoke break.

P.S. And then next year replace every ’kitten’ with a charr.

Ah that’s why that’s everywhere, I was thinking it was some new slang to refer to something that’s weak. Like man your gameplay is just kitten.

Greiger.7092:

P.S. And then next year replace every ‘kitten’ with a charr.

I should really consider opening the topic like ‘Charr are kitten’

Greiger.7092:

I can just imagine some april fools day or something the forum servers will replace every occurrence of the word kitten (filtered or otherwise) with a random image from a database of over 100 pictures of cute kittens.

After all, this is the internet, it’s a series of tubes full of cats, finding 100 pictures of cute kittens could probably be done over a smoke break.

P.S. And then next year replace every ‘kitten’ with a charr.

Or alternatively cats in sinks

Hi everyone,

As this question has been answered we are closing this thread. Thanks