Censorship on FanFiction.net

[Tribun]

This was in their news:

*Profanity filter is now an option for Reviews and Private Messages (PMs). Enabled by default. Login to disable.

*Profanity filter is now active for all Fiction K and Fiction K+ rated entries. Experimental. We find that some members misrate their entries by mistake. Since K and K+ entries should not have cursing to begin with, we believe this is a good compromise. Feedback is welcome. Note that we have no intentions of testing filter for T and higher ratings.

*Forums now have a new profanity filter option. By default, all forums have this filter enabled. Forum admins can login and disable the rudimentary filter. We suggest large forums or forums with very few moderators to leave this filter enabled.

And ah-by-coinicence, the panel with the filter options isn't working!

My comment:
EAT SHIT AND DROP DEAD, FUCKERS! (uncensored)

[Chris OFarrell]

...they put a filter on to get ride of profanity in fanfics which have ratings which explicitly forbid fanfics you post on their site?

What pray tell is so crazy about this?

[Datana]

...they put a filter on to get ride of profanity in fanfics which have ratings which explicitly forbid fanfics you post on their site?

What pray tell is so crazy about this?

I think he's referring to the filters on forums and review pages. FF.net claimed that those could be switched off, but the panel to do so is nonfunctional.

In addition, some of the choices for filtered words are... odd. All mentions of cigarettes and tobacco, for instance, are filtered out, as are many references to alcohol. Those definitely would not fall under a simple "profanity" filter.

Also, I haven't run across any K+ rated anime fanfiction since the implementation of the filter, but I suspect many Japanese names are going to be borked simply due to how common the "shi + ta" or "shi + tsu" construct is (which nearly all other such filters I've seen kill).

EDIT: The mentioned issue with Japanese names was indeed a problem... at least until FF.net stopped filtering stories earlier today. The ability to turn off filters per-user on forums has been removed as well, however, with only forum admins having control; the control panel now only allows users to switch off filters on their own reviews pages. With this, pretty much the entire point has become moot.