One disadvantage of that method is that the stories it gives you will mostly stay local to one fandom, unless you're lucky enough to spot a talented multifandom author, and those are pretty rare. (Eliezer is one, though, which helps.) Good if you're only looking for Harry Potter fic, bad if you're looking for good writing and aren't too concerned about milieu.
Another possible disadvantage is that you might end up with a reading list full of remarkably weird kinks: favorites lists tend to be weighted towards unique tastes. This is probably less of an issue on ff.net with its content policies, but something to keep in mind if you spend a lot of time sifting through (e.g.) AO3 or LJ.
Good points. Out of familiarity, I tend to stick to Harry Potter fanfic, so I don't find that so problematic. (Although all in all, it could be a problem, case in point, note that Luminosity (A rationalist Twilight fanfic by Alicorn, which by the way is an amazing story, even if (like me) you have not read the Twilight books and have no intention of doing so) is an example of a very good non-Harry Potter fanfic that I read that I did not get to by this method. (I got to it from talk here on Less Wrong.) )(Although, that said, I could have gotten to it this...
Edit: New thread posted 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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
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, 14, 15, 16.
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: