What you should look at, Anna, is the dates on those stories. There are always some things which slip through the cracks, and there was a time, too, when stories on the Archive weren't GEd.
It's very, very difficult for any EIC to give GEs a definitive list of what's acceptable and what isn't. GEs largely have to use their own common sense, taking advice from the EIC as appropriate, and where necessary try to establish precedent from what's already on the Archive. Sometimes new policy will be made, either because a pattern seems to be established or some reader will point out something that slipped through the cracks and it's felt that GEs need to be updated on what's acceptable and what isn't.
With the s-word example, a couple of years ago (or maybe not quite that long; I can't remember exactly) LabRat in her capacity as EIC emailed all GEs to tell us that it's Archive policy that the s-word is not acceptable - I think before then most of us were working to the principle that it wasn't, but maybe one or two GEs didn't realise, or didn't see the word as quite beyond the PG13 line. Now, we all know what the policy is so we're working to the same standards on that one.
But in general you have to remember that editing stories for PG13 content
is very much a judgement call. And some things are clear-cut (the f-word, for example), while others are less so. And often things will only get clarified if someone points out a potential problem. We're only human, after all.
And
editing to comment on 'bugger' - yes, James, that's the literal meaning, but it's actually almost never used in that context in the UK. It's just used as a fairly mild swear-word, maybe something akin to 'dammit'. Anyway, it's not that uncommon for words to depart from their original meaning and become somewhat more acceptable - I was surprised to discover that 'jerk' is considered pretty inoffensive, given its original meaning; I wouldn't expect to see a British slang term with a similar meaning (beginning with W, for anyone wondering) to appear in a PG13 fic.
Wendy
