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This issue occurs when I attempt to post the Chinese characters for the novel "Water Margin" 《水浒传》 as a quote on Mythology SE. The error occurs even if a single character 水 is posted. The question referred to is here.

However, this bug does not seem to occur on Meta SE, so it doesn't appear to be a SE-wide bug, but one that is confined to Mythology SE (and possibly other sites).

An image is attached of the error:

enter image description here

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    At least we don't have some silly message like on apple.SE for Korean characters
    – Universal Electricity
    Aug 16, 2015 at 12:50
  • @Norm I was going to make this edit too, but as long as we have the status-completed tag here, it's pretty confusing as it was not fixed network wide, just removed in the specific site which was originally reported here.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Sep 1, 2015 at 12:46
  • @ShadowWizard True... maybe then it is better to have separate reports, with separate statuses? Although on the other hand, site specific reports should be on their metas to begin with...
    – user259867
    Sep 1, 2015 at 12:48
  • @Norm nah, IMO best having one report and canonical answer with list of sites where the filter is disabled. (which we already have here)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Sep 1, 2015 at 12:51

1 Answer 1

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This is not a bug but a spam-prevention measure, introduced in response to a recent massive spam attack in Chinese. See Not all UTF-8 characters supported where a temporary workaround (using HTML entities) is proposed.

Chinese characters are currently blocked network-wide, with exception of several sites:

  • Stack Overflow
  • Stack Overflow em Português
  • Stack Overflow на русском
  • スタック・オーバーフロー
  • Chinese Language
  • Japanese Language
  • Portuguese Language
  • Linguistics
  • Anime & Manga
  • Travel
  • Mythology
  • History
  • Meta Stack Exchange
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    @Oded would it be feasible ("not hard") to change the filter from "any single kanji character disqualifies the post" to something proportion-based? As a mod on one of the sites that was getting attacked I certainly want the spam block; I just wonder if we can tune it at all (without impeding performance too much).
    – Monica Cellio
    Sep 1, 2015 at 16:33
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    @Oded Allowing the content through for established users (a small minimum account age and reputation?) would also make the filter less painful for non-spammers.
    – user215040
    Sep 14, 2015 at 0:57
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    It appears that we only enforce this rule when editing an existing question. If we allow Chinese characters to be posted in the first place then we should also allow them to be reformatted and edited.
    – JosephStyons
    Jul 7, 2016 at 4:37
  • Chinese characters still are blocked in SO when editing questions
    – devRicher
    Jan 10, 2017 at 14:47
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    It's stupid to block Chinese characters network-wide. If you get more spam attack of French or English, do you block Latin Letters? If you assume this would stop spam attack, then I guess all these exception communities are second-class citizens, huh?
    – 炸鱼薯条德里克
    Sep 21, 2019 at 9:03
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    I've posted Chinese characters on Skeptics.SE, Islam.SE, Politics.SE, LanguageLearning.SE; I got an answer at History.SE with Chinese characters. I don't think this answer is up to date.
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Jul 6, 2022 at 7:42
  • @RebeccaJ.Stones One year late, but I bet that the filter is only active for new users and not for users with the remove new user restrictions privilege.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Jul 18 at 3:41

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