The fact that you didn't mention MoR...

 

Obviously the best way to find good fics on ff.nets is by searching for the highest favorites and followers.

 

Actually I have used this method but with a higher word count a lot. That exact method. Scryer is of course far better since you can add more exclusions, but you can't easily change your search terms based on what you're already searching Clicking back wipes them, and it takes me like 2 minutes to type them all in again.

 

Something I haven't seen mentioned is FFA the place only allows quality.

 

Hahahaha...

I think you confuse the ability to use punctuation with quality.

 

Indeed, nothing but quality.

(Okay, full disclosure: there is this one fic there that's mindbogglingly awesome...)

 

I have probably limited myself in many ways, but I used Google - '(Whatever)Harry! Fics' and stuff - and then just looked through communities. If something is not in a community on ff.net I have probably never read it. It's probably a terrible way of searching stuff but my thoughts were 'If it's not been recognised and put somewhere notorious, then it's probably shit'.

 

Then click the search button that lies above the page number, that will bring you back to your own filter settings. You can also save them if needed for the future so you won't have to enter all the things you want, that's atleast what I do.

 

Ah, yep, that does it. Would never have found that on my own to be honest.

 

Kinsfire is for pervs which many who read fanfiction are and what's wrong with bobmin? They were the gateway writers for grey/indy/powerful Harry/Hermione fics.

 

Some would say that's exactly what's wrong with bobmin.

 

Ah.

Well, I can agree that is criticism now, but not in the fresh days of HP fanfiction. For being one of the first in that genre it was also some of the best. I don't say that in defense, but only in acknowledgment of their legacy.

 

I've kind of given up on wading through FF .net directly because there's just so much content and no easy way to sort it. I wish FFN had the same tag system of ao3.

I really like /r/HPfanfiction because they occasionally have some good discussions and there are definitely some interesting recommendations. Plus, you can search through their request history to find more recommendations for the requests they've gotten tired of answering.

TVTropes has a good recommendations page for Harry Potter as well. They have it sorted by types of fics (funny, AU, romances, etc), but they also have their website set up in such a way that you can find a trope you like and then look at the fics that feature it.

 

Personally I look through the author's (the ones who have good stories and personally enjoyed) favorite list

 

Personally I mostly search using ff.net, but because of the plethora of material there I let other readers do the work for me.
So for example, I'll pick the next fandom I'm going to binge on and apply my standard filters (M/T rating, 100k+ words) and then look at the fav/follows of the stories and get an idea on the higher totals and then only attempt the stories that have a fav/follow collection above that limit.
Example, with the HP fandom, I won't touch a story unless it has at least 2.5k fav/follows and has a blurb that catches my attention.
Sure I'll miss the odd gem in the rough, but I also don't have to suffer the pile of nonsense that's also there.

 

Well, i use standart ffn features.

Update date / publish date
English
Exclude characters : DM, SS.

And then the fun part starts - looking for nuggets of gold in something brown that smells funny.

 

Mostly on ff.net, through their filter service. My most frequently used filter is number of reviews, since it is one of the most reliable indicators of quality (there are exceptions, of course). I also use a pairing for several of my favorite couples. Surprisingly, I never got into the habit of searching for specific genres, even though I have some obvious favorites.

 

Wow, you must miss a ton of good stories. Firstly, favs/follows is not a good indicator of a story's quality. It's an indicator of how good the author is at pandering to a specific audience/finding a niche, or how long the story has been around for. Like, I have exactly one story that has more than 2,500 favs, but that's only because it's been around for 7 years and has 1.5 million views. And it's not good.

I could list a ton of good fics that you would miss out on with your methods. Unatoned, Incorruptible; the Dementor's Stigma, Ectomancer, The Unforgiving Minute, By The Divining Light, Gentleman Usher of the Scarlet Rod, Breach of Contract: Twelve Signs, the Song of the Trees, The Skitterleap. So instead of all that, you want to find more popular stories like Poison Pen and Harry Crow, or recent additions to the club like Cadmean Victory and Delende Est, which while popular, are terrible compared to the ones I just listed.

 

I read everything. That's how I find good fics. I read the trash. I read the mediocre. I sometimes stumble upon treasure. My standard FFN search is 20k+ words, any rating, English. If a story averages over 2.5k words per chapter I read it.

 

I use FFN search with the favorite/follow filter on. After that I exclude anything I don't want to read that day(certain characters/genres/pairing). I add last updated/published in the last 7 or 30 days then just see if there's any summaries that interest me enough to actually try to read a story. The last updated/published filter allows me to see any new or popular stories that are still actively drawing in readers instead of just being super old stories that many people over time favorite.