Rachel Aaron (author of the Eli Monpress series, sample of "The Legend of Eli Monpress" currently on my Kindle being read) is I think the most effusive praise I've gotten from a published author, though I've heard rumors of certain others speaking in the halls of SF conventions. But you're probably thinking of the Nebula, which is voted on by members of the SFWA. The Hugo is a reader award, voted on by the attendees of Worldcon. Look at the review page of HPMOR if you're questioning whether the readers have been sufficiently enthusiastic.
I'm honestly a bit nonplussed at the idea that reader reception of HPMOR has been insufficiently enthusiastic to try for a Hugo. It's fairly routine for a review to say that HPMOR is the best thing they've ever read out of all of fiction. If that is insufficient enthusiasm to think, "Hm, I might as well try for Best Novel, or the Gryffindors will look at me funny for my sheer lack of courage", I don't know what level ought to be required.
The Hugo is a reader award, voted on by the attendees of Worldcon.
Ranked preference voting, though. I'd expect a significant numbers of voters to rank "no award" ahead of any fanfic just on general principles. If it was just a single round of single preference voting the odds would look much better.
The new discussion thread (part 15) is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 82. The previous thread passed 1000 comments as of the time of this writing, and so has long passed 500. Comment in the 13th thread until you read chapter 82.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: