How to Find Hidden Gem Web Novels: Minimum Filters and Hide Dropped

Sort any catalogue by its biggest number and you get the books everyone already knows. Sort it by Added or Updated and you get thousands of openers with three chapters and no readers. Neither list is where a hidden gem lives.

A hidden gem is a book enough people cared about to prove it's readable, and few enough that you haven't seen it on every list. So you need two things: a floor, and a way to take out the dead. That's what the minimum filters and Hide dropped are for.

Minimum filters: a floor under the numbers

Open the filters on any Browse page and you'll find one or more controls that start with "Min." Each sets a floor on a figure that platform really has, so they differ from one catalogue to the next:

They're steps and not a box you type a number into. We cut each ladder from how that figure is really spread on that platform, so every step still leaves a list worth browsing. That's also why the ladders look so different: 10,000 favorites on Zongheng is a different achievement from 10,000 on JJWXC.

Four details that save confusion:

• A book with no figure is left out. Set any Fanqie score minimum and the unrated books go, which is most of the catalogue. That's usually what you want, but know it's happening.
• Fanqie's Reads minimum counts lifetime reads, not the current count, so a finished book that the feed stopped pushing still clears it. Why Fanqie has two read counts.
• Qimao's Score minimum only keeps books with 100 or more ratings. Under that, a Qimao score says very little.
• There's no minimum on monthly votes or tickets. Those reset every month and mostly go to books still being written, so a floor on them would hide nearly every finished novel.

What each figure means is in the guide for its platform: Qidian, Fanqie, JJWXC, Faloo, Qimao and Zongheng.

Hide dropped: take out the dead

"Ongoing" only means the author never marked the book finished. On some platforms most ongoing books stopped years ago. We counted.

Hide dropped is one switch for that. It hides a novel that is not completed and has had no new chapter in six months. Chinese serials usually update daily, so half a year of silence isn't a break.

It's deliberately cautious about what it calls dropped:

• A completed book is never hidden, however old.
• A book with no update date on record stays. Unknown isn't the same as old.
• A book that sits on a ranking board right now stays. Readers are voting for it this week.
• A book that is marked completed on another platform stays, even if this platform's copy still says ongoing. How the same novel is linked across platforms.

Filter to Completed and the switch turns itself off and says "Not for completed", since there's nothing left for it to hide.

Hide dropped and the Updated filter do related jobs. Updated is the precise one: within a month, within three. Hide dropped is the one to leave on while you browse, because it keeps every finished book in the list and only removes the unfinished ones that went quiet.

Recipes

Each of these is a floor, a way to take out the dead, and a sort that isn't the default. Swap in your own genre or tag.

• Qidian, alive and already followed: ongoing, 10k fans or more, dropped hidden, newest update first. The famous books are in there, but so is everything else that built a real following and is still being written.
• Qidian cultivation with a floor: cultivation, 10k recs or more, dropped hidden. Recs are free votes, so this is a floor on reach.
• Fanqie, finished and well rated: completed, score 9 or more, 100k lifetime reads or more, by all-time reads.
• JJWXC, read to the end: completed No CP with 1k favorites or more, by clicks per chapter. Clicks per chapter rewards books people didn't abandon halfway.
• Faloo fanfiction readers gave flowers to: fanfiction, 10k flowers or more, dropped hidden. Flowers are something a reader has to go and give, so they say more than a read does.
• Qimao, rated by a crowd: completed, score 9.5 or more from at least 1k ratings.
• Zongheng, shelved and alive: 1k favorites or more, dropped hidden, newest update first.

The ascending trick

Every sort has a Descending and Ascending switch beside it. Combine Ascending with a minimum on the same figure and the list starts right at your floor and climbs.

JJWXC danmei, completed, 10k favorites or more, fewest first opens on the books that only just cleared 10,000 favorites. On JJWXC that's already a hit, since the typical book there has a handful. But none of these are the titles at the top of the default list, and that's the point.

Move the floor up or down a step until the list is the size you want to read through.

Sort by something that isn't popularity

Once the floor is doing the quality control, the sort is free to do something else:

• Updated shows what's moving this week among books that cleared the floor.
• Added shows what's new to the catalogue among them.
• Words, either direction, finds the long ones or the short ones.
• A second figure. Floor on one number, sort by another. Books that are middling on favorites and high on clicks per chapter, or modest on reads and high on score, are the ones that underperformed their quality.

Narrow it until the count is exact

A broad view shows a capped count like "2.5k+" and a few pages. Once two or more filters are applied, a view shows its first five pages, 250 books, and tells you to narrow it if there's more. That's on purpose: nobody reads past page five of a list they could cut down instead.

So add a genre, a tag or a length. On a computer every change applies at once. On a phone, Filters opens a sheet and Show results applies everything together. The filters in force sit under the bar as badges you can remove one at a time, with Clear all beside them.

The tag filter is the strongest cut. Include a trope, exclude the two you can't stand, and a 2,500-book view becomes forty. What the tags mean.

The same idea inside booklists

Booklists got the same treatment.

On a booklists page you can set a minimum number of books a list holds, and on Qidian, JJWXC and Fanqie a minimum on how followed or viewed the list is. A-level JJWXC lists with 100 follows or more and Qidian lists of 20 books or more with 1k follows or more are both short enough to read through.

Inside a list, the row above the books narrows it by status and length, and has its own Hide dropped. On Qidian, JJWXC and Fanqie it can also keep only the books a reader or the curator wrote a note about, which is where the "why this one" lives. A 400-book Fanqie list with Hide dropped on and Completed picked is a very different read from the raw list. Why booklists are worth the effort.

Keep the search, not the list

When a view looks right, choose Save search beside the badges. It keeps every minimum, Hide dropped and the sort, and the results move while the question stays the same: new books clear the floor, quiet ones drop out. How saved searches work.

Your own Library has Hide dropped too, along with the Updated filter. Turn it on over a long Planned shelf and you'll see which of the books you meant to read are still going.

Explore the catalogue: Qidian (novels, rankings, stats); Fanqie (novels, rankings, stats); JJWXC (novels, rankings, stats); Faloo (novels, rankings, stats); Qimao (novels, rankings, stats); Zongheng (novels, rankings, stats).