On September 12, 2002, FanFiction.Net banned material that was rated NC-17. Stories categorized as NC-17, or advertised as potentially such were removed without prior notice. Since then, the site has relied on its users to report stories that are inappropriately rated.
Prior to the new policy, the site would use a pop-up to prompt readers to say whether they were over 17 or not, a measure which proved to be largely ineffective.
While some protested at the NC-17 ban and others edited their work to be suitable for an R rating, most simply moved their work to personal sites, fan fiction mailing lists, online blogs, archives which allowed or specifically catered to writers and readers of adult fan fiction material, or journals (particularly LiveJournals). Much NC-17 material was moved to a site under the name of Adultfanfiction.net [3], a similar site which was created to serve those adults who write R and NC-17 rated fan fiction, or websites like Ficwad.com or MediaMiner.org, which accept all ratings. The NC-17 ban prompted many authors to abandon the site completely for one or both other sites that allowed R and NC-17 stories. Despite this ban, a large amount of fan fiction with pornographic content can still be found.