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I'm not sure if people are aware but for the last 10 years or so fan fiction writers have been rating their own fiction. It's something everyone decides for themselves. The ratings go from G-NC-17 and while it's nice to know what to expect in the story there have been some downsides.
Fanfiction.net for example used to allow NC-17 stories until too many kids started using the site and they pretty much deleted any story with a NC-17 rating. But many people just changed the rating to R. Then there were debates on what constitutes a R rating in fan fiction. For example some fans thought two males kissing is R rated while other people were rating it PG. But if a guy and a girl were kissing in the story no one complained if it was rated PG.
Some ratings are used to exclude stories from certain sites and mostly in fandom it's had some sucess in helping people avoid stories they really don't want to read. Like anything with rape, slavery, torture, underage sex, graphic violence, or deathfic.
Forget about NC-17 people wanted more than that before they ventured into a story.
Though, I think the warnings kind of got out of control when people started warning for excessive romance, hair cutting, tatooes, wingfic, leather, and etc....I've read warnings that were actually longer than the story.
The downside is that there are some brilliant stories that contain those kinds of warnings and I know many readers avoid the stories due to the warnings, which is fair enough. But I kind of like the idea with published fiction that people read and are exposed to ideas and uncomfortable topics and concepts that make them think.
In fandom, it's voluntary if the author wants to warn and people can post to their own websites but based on my experience in fandom I don't even want to think about what would happen if that translated over to real world fiction. People already shy away from fandoms that frown on bdsm type stories and depicting darker variations of the characters.
So I'm not exactly happy with warnings in fandom (feels too much like spoilers btw) and I can only imagine how much worse it would be if it were mandatory and money were involved. In fandom since there isn't any money involved most authors post to their own site, or LJ and don't care if people skip their stories due to the warnings. So there is a lot more freedom to write controverialy. But if the same author had no place to share their work due to the content in their book because it was rated too high then I can already see many authors who depend on publishing and selling their books to make money changing their story in order to get a lower rating. I don't think this is good for anyone.
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