OK, so I've heard a lot of people complaining that the quality of ff.net has gone down a lot, as I joined around 2012 I wanna know the truth.

Has fanfiction.net gotten worse as the Harry Potter fandom grew(Harry Potters the largest fandom on there I think)? Are there too few Admins for a huge site? Is the quality of the fanfics so much worse then it used to be?? Has the site changed so much? Has it actually gotten better and people are just being nostalgic?

Edit: Moved to its own thread. -Yak

 

I'm going to be honest, I've never heard someone waxing poetic about the heydays of fanfiction.net.

As for your question, I haven't noticed any major changes since I started using the site. Story quality has been pretty much consistent throughout. Glitches aren't uncommon, but are usually resolved eventually.

 

Good Harry Potter fanfiction are a rare breed nowadays though.

 

Good Harry Potter fanfiction was always a rare breed.

 

More likely the stuff they thought was good back then is obscured by nostalgia. I can guarantee a lot of what I liked in my early days of fanfiction makes me cringe these days.

 

FFnet always had too few admins/mods and the ones who exist suck since every now and then they crack down on sex and profany but leave things like phlagarism and non story posts.

 

All it is is that our standards have improved.

 

Agreed. I think another thing that stands out about fanfics these days is that people have developed their love for certain pairings much more than before. It seems like by just putting a Harry/Fleur or Harry/Daphne pairing in your stories bio you can guarantee more follows/favorites than the story truly deserves. The same could be said for Manipulative!Dumbledore or Weasley!Bashing.

 

There's the fact that our standard have improved, but perhaps also that most known author of good fanfiction have moved on to something else as well. It's been years for most of us, reading and writing fanfiction of Harry Potter. At some point, you just leave because you get busy with real-life; you're no longer a teenager at home or at school, you have a job, perhaps a wife, and kids now. Not everyone has the time to put into fanfiction. With the incoming books, and movie, I'm assuming we'll see a boom, but it's probably going to focus on the new content instead of the old. AU!CC, and OC!Newt are coming into town people.

 

I was out the moment they started cracking down on smut.

 

It's actually pretty admirable that fanfiction.net is still trundling along, little better or worse, after 18 years. Most other media sites have fallen, been supplanted, wrecked the user experience with ads and other monetisation efforts, or been sold on to a media conglomerate that sees the user base as an exploitable asset.

Negative changes: Blanket smut ban, non-selectable text

Positive changes: The community additions (eg. forums and c2), the Android (and ios?) app even if I don't use it, good global server performance

TL;DR - No major change. Ff.net has tended to improve over time, despite the occasional blunder.

 

With the end of Naruto and harry potter, there is a lack of inspiration on the site. Authors are not inspired anymore or stories become lackluster. There are some stand outs but most stories get abandoned before getting off the gound.

They were the 2 biggest fandoms and unless something new rises to that level, we will not see an improvement.

If you look carefully, there are some gems

 

They are still some good stories but they are burried in a mountain of bad ones.

 

Fanfiction.net is full of stories that are fun to read. Most are good enough to waste time with and fun, some are terrible, some are outstanding. Always has been like this and always will be, as long as it exists.

And the app is fucking awesome.

 

Partly right.

I have seen that the fanfiction that is older appears to have better grammar among other things.

However, I believe this happens with any fandom that grows... the more people post, the more horrendous fics get created.

Just my 2 cents.

 

So, overall most of you think Fanfiction.net and fanfics in general have improved over the years? I've looked through tons of shit fics throughout the years and usually I can find a mediocre time waster without much trouble I like sifting through people's favourite lists and when I joined DLP an discovered Scryer finding a bunch of good stories was awesome, I don't really see a major difference either. I don't remember exactly where I saw people complaining about the site vaguely remember it being reddit?

I disagree though that the Harry Potter/Naruto fandoms are likely to fall. Huge fandoms that have plenty to offer story wise are unlikely to diminsh for another 5-6 years when people maybemight grow bored of them.

Those will be interesting to see either way and I'm assuming from the terrible reviews of CC that AU!CC can be an improvement also interesting to see how good FBAWTFT Fics will turn out to be. Also, wondering if a boom of the new will rekindle interests in the old? In 2015 some abandoned stories were brought back to life and it'd be interesting if the new movie'll bring out some more.

Regardless I'm content to keep reading through the few good ones, on a steady reliable site.

 

But they're not dead fandoms? Both have major upcoming/ongoing releases.

 

I consider them to be dead fandoms. Upcoming Naruto is focused on milking the franchise is basically side stories of everybody's kids. Even though Harry Potter is releasing/released new books/movies, they generated far less hype than the heydays of Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. Both series are just generating content for fans to fanboy over, and I don't see upcoming releases drawing many people that weren't already a fan of either series to their respective fandoms.