We seriously need a filter plug-in for fanfiction.net that excludes fiction stories with either the words 'Slash' (etc) in the summary, and/or that automatically blanks out certain character pairings (most notably, Draco M. and Harry P./Severus S. and Harry P./Voldemort and Harry P.) because the main fanfiction.net Harry Potter list is literally being drowned by the sheer amount of (usually of poor quality) slash fictions being uploaded on there.

While using character list filters (for example, seeing stories on the main list that are just Harry P. and Daphne G.) is a work-around, there are quite a few stories on there that just have 'Harry P.' as a single character in the category, and there's no way to filter out any secondary character. Quite a few decent nuggets 'slip through the net' that way.

There have been some attempts at creating Firefox plug-ins that attempt to do this, but they've either ceased development or are incompatible with the latest versions.

I'll admit this freely: when it comes to programming, I have no clue. Heck, a duck would know more than me! So, this is a question to the programmers/knowledgable people here; how hard would it be to create a plug-in/filter that can filter out the literary crap? Would there be any restrictions, or requirements/resources needed by the fanfiction.net site itself?

 

I dunno. It would be hard. What about the stories that have the words 'No slash' in their summaries or the main characters are Harry & Voldemort, and so on, but without slash?

 

I don't think filters would be that useful. Tags are what I would advocate. But that would require somebody going through every story in existence and putting tags on them.

 

Can I have a filter that just removes this story? :fire
:awesome

Actually, what we need is FFN to get off their anti-het asses and add a legitimate FEATURE (built into the site instead of tacked on by a Greasemonkey script so that every time the site is modified it breaks the script) that allows authors to categorize their stories as Slash, Femslash, or Het, and allows users to filter the listings accordingly.

 

Well, since the thread was about FFN, I figured the mentioning another site would have been approaching snarky, counter productive, non sequitur territory... and I try to only make those on purpose.

 

Chances are, if several popular authors banded together and decided to always post their latest chapters to PC (similar to The Santi and the WBA), we could increase its use quite a bit.

/random idea.

 

PatronusCharm is good, but deals with Harry Potter fanfiction only. And since I read a lot of other genres too, it just seems more sensible to bundle everything I read on FFN (if I can).

 

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=16918

That. It doesn't block stories automatically but it does the job well enough once you get some good bannings in.

 

I use a greasemonkey plugin called power fanfiction.net in addition to fanfiction.net - extended, and I have it set to automatically exclude stories that have these characters:

Draco M., Severus S., Voldemort, Tom R. Jr., Cedric D., Bella, Edward, Jacob, Lucius M., Ron W., Ginny W., Sasuke U., Hinata H.

That removes about 90% of the crap.

Then I also have it set to highlight the words:

slash, M/M, MPREG, m-preg, bash, yaoi, -ai, manipulative, dark!, evil!, crossover, xover, gray!, grey!

That about covers it. both are available at userscripts.org

-PinstripedPajamas

 

That, I see, would be one of the few major downsides for a filter like this.

They usually are, though. It's same sort of example for a Draco/Harry pairing: there's a chance that it might not be slash, but that still doesn't change the fact that most stories out there with that pairing are slash.

Unless it was an automated process, it'd be too much work, unless it was a user/author fuction.

Agreed. Not all fanfiction readers are slash readers, but it seems that the ones that who aren't slash readers are a dying breed these days.

Whilst seeing PC becoming more popular/used could be a good thing, it still doesn't change the fact that many new fanfiction authors -of which who may know nothing of the various other alternate fanfiction sites out there like PC- automatically join the 'big sites'. The biggest at the moment is FanFiction.net.

Look at it from another, unrelated angle: Microsoft Windows might be a pile a crap even if there are other viable operating systems out there, but it's still the most used/developed upon.

I read FFN because sometimes, sometimes there's actually a good, non-slash story on there. Plus, it also caters to other things aside from Harry Potter.

While it would raise PC's usage quite a bit, it still wouldn't change the fact that most authors/readers would still use FFN.

If this works, I seriously thank you!