Organizing fics by year was supposed to make my lists easier to maintain. I may have been naive :)
When I first started getting into Drarry fanfiction, I would often take a look at other people's lists of favorites to see what I should read. And most lists are organized by era, theme, trope, or length, or some other common characteristic, which is a great thing when you love 8th year fics for example, and want to read more of them.
But one thing I would notice was how quickly these would go out of date if the poster didn't keep up with maintaining them. And I realized that it would be a lot of work to maintain such lists. So when I eventually thought I had read enough Drarry to make my own lists, I thought that perhaps if I organized them by publication date then it would make it easier to maintain them--I mean, there are only a finite number of fanfics posted in, say, 2011, and there won't ever be any more! So I could make a list of the Best of 2011 and not have to worry about it becoming passé as more fics are published.
Ha!
I don't think I realized at first just how many fanfics are posted each year. I never expected that I would be able (or even want to) read all of them, but I did imagine that I would be able to read nearly all the ones recced widely by others and so catch most of the good ones. Silly, silly, me. I mean, just looking at 2013, I happen to know that capitu has recced 193 fics that were published that year (she's amazing)! But I've only read 103 of those. To be fair, I also read a lot of other fics she didn't rec, but still, that means there are at least 90 fics from 2013 alone that I might enjoy that I haven't read. And then there are all the other years, as well as all the fics still being written. So it's basically hopeless.
I'm still updating my lists as I read new-to-me fics from past years that I think are excellent, only I think now that it's always going to be a work-in-progress, no matter that I explicitly was trying to avoid that when I chose the theme for my lists. But it is certainly a better problem having too many fics to read rather than having too few :)
But one thing I would notice was how quickly these would go out of date if the poster didn't keep up with maintaining them. And I realized that it would be a lot of work to maintain such lists. So when I eventually thought I had read enough Drarry to make my own lists, I thought that perhaps if I organized them by publication date then it would make it easier to maintain them--I mean, there are only a finite number of fanfics posted in, say, 2011, and there won't ever be any more! So I could make a list of the Best of 2011 and not have to worry about it becoming passé as more fics are published.
Ha!
I don't think I realized at first just how many fanfics are posted each year. I never expected that I would be able (or even want to) read all of them, but I did imagine that I would be able to read nearly all the ones recced widely by others and so catch most of the good ones. Silly, silly, me. I mean, just looking at 2013, I happen to know that capitu has recced 193 fics that were published that year (she's amazing)! But I've only read 103 of those. To be fair, I also read a lot of other fics she didn't rec, but still, that means there are at least 90 fics from 2013 alone that I might enjoy that I haven't read. And then there are all the other years, as well as all the fics still being written. So it's basically hopeless.
I'm still updating my lists as I read new-to-me fics from past years that I think are excellent, only I think now that it's always going to be a work-in-progress, no matter that I explicitly was trying to avoid that when I chose the theme for my lists. But it is certainly a better problem having too many fics to read rather than having too few :)