Different communities on different webcomic platforms

[avalonmao]

I was wondering what yall think about the different communities of webcomics - ie, smackjeeves, tapastic, comicfury, etc?

My opinion (clearly) isn't extremely informed because I haven't been frequenting forums as often as I used to, so these opinions will be a bit dated, but anyway'

Tapastic - as far as i'm aware it has had fairly liberal userbase that seemed (predominantly) female, though of course there are a lot of male users as well. It doesn't seem to attract a lot of trolls - though this was back in 2015, and things appeared to have changed a bit in a few areas for better or for worse

Comicfury - listen. I haven't been active on this site since like 2012. But to my knowledge it feels like it's populated with a lot of dads and it feels super American for whatever reason. I remember I found a forum post in 2010 that literally made jokes about chinamen with a racial caricature inserted into one of the posts. it was wild.

Line Webtoon - TBH I don't even know if this place HAS a community??? As far as I know there aren't any ways to see the profiles of individual users. Most of the comments consist of "make this longer" and the vast majority of community interaction is through votes on your comic. I do appreciate skittles1234566 though, they're nice as hell even though I never upload my webcomic there nowadays lol

Smackjeeves - I haven't been on this website for YEARS too tbh, but my experience with it, what little I have that is, gives me the impression that a lot of yaoi teenage/young adult fangirls/women flock to the forum and the site and it seems very cliqueish as well...but I mean that's just what I found, I could be wrong.

What are your opinions on these sites/basic impressions of the userbase?

[Parkblog79]

Tapastic: posh (hard to breathe a bit...)
Comicfury: less posh. The community's gotten better since 2012 in my opinion. The number of dads have decreased, I think. Now there are more young people on the site. Comicfury is a bit more wild (mostly because it's less posh.)
Line Webtoon: Never tried it, but probably very posh and hard to breathe. Not a good idea if you're just starting out on webcomics.
Smackjeeves: ? Strange forums.

I use mainly Comicfury and Tapastic for all my comic needs. They're truly the best sites to be at at my level.

[avalonmao]

comicfury has fewer dads??? dang I need to get on that site more lol

[tiredfishcomi]

What's wrong with there being dads in a community? I'm a dad. My mom thinks I'm a pretty groovy dude.

[TonyEsp]

actually line webtoons is the perfect place for newbies you can get more exposure then on tapastic the biggest downside it has is that you can't interact with the community like here

[jurinova]

I've only got experience on Smackjeeves and Tapastic and I honestly don't think there's that much of a difference. Especially since a lot of creators and readers use more than one site, so uniformity is not really a surprise. I know everyone keeps saying SJ is the BL center of the webcomic world but I think even that has changed. There seems to be more BL on the front page of Tapastic these days than on the front page of SJ. Which is really not a surprise since BL is very popular and Tapastic seems to be the best way to turn that popularity into actual profit.

The only big difference I've actually noticed is that the format definitely affects the way people interract. In Tapastic there's the Like button, so people easily show their support by just clicking that. In Smackjeeves there's no such thing, so it drives people to leave comments more easily. People do comment on Tapastic as well but it doesn't seem to be as common. At least not on the less popular comics.

[mappypaint]

Let's see, for my main story comic:

Smackjeeves- I started posting here back in 2010 and was building a fanbase slowly. The readers during those times were nice and the comments were mostly about the story. The best thing about SJ is they gave my comic a stint in the spotlight, which in their site restructuring recently, gives random frontpage spotlight even for the ones that was featured before. As for the forums, I had the feeling of being ignored. It's like they have an exclusive club there that they were the only ones in the conversation and the rest of the users are ignored. So I don't go to the forums much and just stayed close to my readers. In 2013 I went on a hiatus and came back 2015 when I started to upload new pages again. The fan (subs) count was the same but most of the active readers were gone.

Tapastic- After the decline of activity in Smackjeeves, I decided to upload my comic in tapastic in 2015. Again it was a slow building of a subscriber base but , like in Smackjeeves, the readers I get were active. Shortly after uploading the comic I joined the forums and found it to be real friendly. I had a better time in this forum than the one in SJ. As for the type of readers it was similar to SJ, and with the type of commenting and notification system tapastic has it was more easier to engage with readers. In growth, my comic in tapastic reached 100subs in a little over a year compared to SJ where it's 99 even with the spotlight feature and being there for 7 years now.

Webtoons- Yeah, I can't see a community there. I started uploading the reformatted version of my comic there late last year. Currently 20% of the comics is uploaded and the growth of readers already reached 40. But the thing is I only got a single comment in 15episodes... I got a heck lot more comments in tapastic when I only had 5 subscribers.XD This must be the feeling of having hundreds of subscribers but nobody is commenting because I haven't experienced that in Smackjeeves and Tapastic.XD So seeing that webtoon readers need not to be treated specially, I replaced the old pages of my comic here in tapastic to the reformatted version.

[SirGutsalot]

I've been on Webtoon for about 3 months now and I've got 2K subs there on my comic Lacrim. On the surface, yes, the community is pretty invisible and pretty hard to engage with but it definitely is possible to rev up and become active. This just means you have to take it on yourself to find different, creative ways to bring readers in, prompt interesting comments and challenge your readers. I did this by creating specials that directly engage the audience as if they are actually involved in making the comic. In addition, celebrate their ideas and don't take any comments for granted. But most importantly, REPLY REPLY REPLY! This is the best way to create a community when there isn't one.
Anyway, that's my spiel! Have a good day

[Parkblog79]

Really? Okay! I didn't know.

[69Michi]

It's pretty late and I should be asleep at this time but just dropping by to toss in a little of my own opinion.
Tapastic is a wonderful place with a very helpful community/forum that I very much appreciate. But it's much harder to build up your reader base here and it does require a lot of patience.

Webtoon on the other hand, because of the amount of visitors they get everyday, you can easily gain a decent amount of audience if you post on there. Community might be invisible but it's just means you have to take extra effort in communicating. I know that I have made several wonderful loyal readers when they decided to hit me up on my social media/patreon. And also I managed to meet and befriend with some of the most fantastic webcomic artists on Webtoon. On a side note, I do think webtoon do a better job at promoting their comic be it featured or discover. I just found out recently that on LINE WEBTOON's ads that you might come across randomly, they actually also promote discover series, not just featured series.

[StrangeVision]

Eh none of the comments I get on Webtoons address the length of updates, most of which are two pages. I s'pose if they were all one page...

[kyupol]

Tapastic - better more serious comics in general are here. Cant find those on comicfury and smackjeeves

Comicfury - I hate the admins there. Big big big on censorship unless you're an ultra liberal hardcore feminist or LGBT person. You can't defend a street preacher on the forums or promote Christianity in general, but meanwhile, you can talk trash about Donald Trump all day long and promote other religions like Theistic Satanism, Native Indian Spirituality, etc...

Smackjeeves - Used to be alive and well a long time ago but now just seems dead and seems to attract the teenagers and all these yaoi fans.

Drunkduck - Mostly "old guard" from the old site way back in 2002. Used to be awesome but they kept fixing things that arent broken. The web design and programming sucks but I love the admins here though. Even though they are liberals, they respect free speech and have defended my right to post opinions they disagree on. Even though back then I used to be more hot tempered. Seems like the older I get, the more I mellow out lol... used to be like one of those guys in the prison who would beat you up or talk trash to you if he thinks you're looking at him funny...

I have stirred up the pot a lot in this site and even challenged some people to meet up for a street fight (didnt materialize in real life... but you get the point about being hateful online lol)... and I should have been rightfully banned. But I DID NOT GET BANNED and MUCH RESPECT for the admins there!

[indagold]

Only other site i've been on is smackjeeves and boy is that a wild ride. It's basically a ghost town, i've been on it since 2007 and hear absolutely nothing from anyone in all those 10 years. They also have a massive bl base and maybe less discreet than here, they don't give two fucks their site is swimming in yaoi rape porn. Not to mention the sprite community is nothing you want to get near. I do game design and posted some work only to get them telling me to go back to the kitchen and telling me to fuck off.

[punkarsenic]

Tapastic: posh (hard to breathe a bit...)

what do you mean by posh?