Spam Text Filter Ultra (STFU)

Spam Text Filter Ultra

An ultra-lightweight addon for filtering out annoying spam messages from the public chat channels. STFU was made for WoW Classic and Burning Crusade Classic, but it may be compatible with Retail (untested).

Configuration

To configure STFU, open Interface Options, click the AddOns tab, then click the STFU category in the list. You can also type /stfu into chat which is a shortcut to open the configuration page.

Filter List

The text box contains a list of all the Lua patterns that will be used to filter and hide chat messages. If a pattern listed here matches against a message in any public chat channel (i.e. General, Trade, LookingForGroup, etc.) then that message won’t be displayed. A default filter list is pre-loaded when the addon is installed, but feel free to add and remove filters as you see fit. Lines beginning with a # are treated as disabled/comments, and are ignored by the addon. You’ll notice a few disabled lines at the bottom of the default filter list which you can easily enable by removing the # and clicking the OK button. If you ever want to revert back to the default filter list, just click the Defaults button in the window’s bottom left.

Patterns

Filter patterns are entered one-per-line, and are not case-sensitive. You can add simple keywords or phrases, like stockades or wts edgemaster, but the real power lies in using Lua pattern matching. For example, lf1m.+tank will match and block both “LF1M SM need tank” and “LF1M tank ZF”. Lua patterns are similar to regular expressions (for those coders out there), except simpler and with a few small syntax differences. To learn more about writing your own Lua patterns, you can read about them here.

Throttle

When enabled, feature will hide chat messages that are repeated too quickly by the same player. The amount of time before a message can be repeated is set to 30 seconds by default, but can be changed on the configuration page.

Debug Mode

This setting, when enabled, will output a message into the chat box every time a chat message is filtered which reports the message that was blocked as well as the filter pattern that matched it. This is an easy way for you to test if a new filter you added is working as intended. A warning message will also be printed in chat if an invalid pattern is found in your filter list so you can correct it.