If I was looking for the most popular, I’d use kudos. That seems like it translates best to “fics people have read and at least moderately liked”.
If I was looking for “good” fics (i.e. ones that I’m most likely to enjoy), I’d usually use comments. Those seem to be more correlated with fics people really enjoyed and got engaged with. Fewer short fics and less simple fluff or smut (which I do enjoy, but only in certain moods).
To me, hits just say how appealing the tags and summary are. And I’ll have to read an evaluate those myself anyway before reading.
Lastly, I’m always confused about how people use bookmarks. Some seem to bookmark what they really like, some bookmark everything they’ve read, some bookmark things they haven’t read yet. So I mostly ignore that stat.
Re: When looking for the most popular fics on Ao3 for a pairing/character/whatever...
If I was looking for “good” fics (i.e. ones that I’m most likely to enjoy), I’d usually use comments. Those seem to be more correlated with fics people really enjoyed and got engaged with. Fewer short fics and less simple fluff or smut (which I do enjoy, but only in certain moods).
To me, hits just say how appealing the tags and summary are. And I’ll have to read an evaluate those myself anyway before reading.
Lastly, I’m always confused about how people use bookmarks. Some seem to bookmark what they really like, some bookmark everything they’ve read, some bookmark things they haven’t read yet. So I mostly ignore that stat.