This is very strange. The only unusual change between FFF v2.3.0 and v2.3.1 was adding internationalization to the background jobs code. But that shouldn't affect the foreground data collection as far as I know...
@saluli, @ladyro7: Can one or both of you try the previous version again to confirm that this problem only cropped up in the most recent version?
FanFicFarePlugin-v2.3.0.zip