How long can I be absent from Tapastic before the comics I'm subscribed to get penalized?

[nolongerusestheforum]

I remember reading somewhere here on the forums that comics get penalized for "ghost subscribers"/people who aren't using Tapastic anymore. I'm not sure exactly what that penalty is or if that's even true that there is a penalty. But if it is true, does anyone know how long it takes for a Tapastic account to be considered inactive? How long could I go without viewing the comics I'm subscribed to before they get penalized? I don't need to know the exact amount of time, just a rough idea.

[thekinginthesun]

I don't think it works exactly like that.

The thing is, tapastic has its own algorithm to determine popular/trending comics (comics that appear on the main page - and get views & subs because of that). This algorithm is based on how many subscribers are active that day, and by active I mean liking the pages, commenting, etc.

If a comic has a large percentage of ghost subs that don't interact at all, it can't reach the trending page. As far as I know, that's the only penalty.

[RiverKai]

I've never been absent for long periods of time from Tapastic, but since I actually just went through my massive reading list and found a ton of comics that I'm subscribed to that haven't updated for 2 years, I think that it works both ways. I think despite how many ghosties you have, as long as your numbers are exceeding other recently updated comics' numbers, you will be placed onto the "Trending" page until you have a large enough amount to reach the "Popular" page. However, that could be a reason why if there were to be someone with 8k subs and over half of them are ghosts, for example, they may not make the same placing as other 8k sub comics with more active subscribers.

[AnnaLandin]

I'm not sure where you heard, that, but the "penalty" is that they won't show up in Trending or Popular as often, as the algorithms governing those relies on engagement with the pages. Likes, comments, shares, etc. And it's not like not showing up in Trending/Popular is the end of the world for a creator.

But for your "ghosting" to have any noticeable impact on a creator with, say, thousands of subscribers, then you'd need to have several hundred ghost-subs. Having just one or two people be absent is no big deal. Don't feel guilty about it!

[shazzbaa]

For an example:

• Say I am a comic creator and I have 5 subscribers. I update, and all 5 of those subscribers read the new page, like it, and comment on it, plus one new person who saw the comic in fresh. That means I have 6/5 subscribers interacting with my page, which means I have 120% engagement. The Tapastic algorithm that takes this into account is going to be more likely to bump the comic into Trending for a few minutes.

• But if I am a comic creator and I have 10 subscribers, and I update, and only 6 of those subscribers read the new page, like it, and comment on it -- that's the same number of people as the previous example, but that's only 6/10, 60% engagement, which doesn't look as good to Tapastic's algorithms.

We don't know exactly how it works, but that's the basic idea; it's not exactly a "penalty," it's just good to know that raking in inactive subscribers through things like sub-for-sub isn't a good plan. But that means that, to answer your question, it affects the creator when the creator posts pages that you aren't reading. That's when you become a "ghost sub" that doesn't help them in the algorithm.

This is something I've been thinking about a lot myself. I've been finding that I don't really like the system of getting notified of comic updates, and thus while I like Tapastic pretty well as a creator, I don't think it works for me as a reader. I've been letting a lot of notifications sit for a long time, so I've been wondering if I should go ahead and unsub and check comics manually instead or something.

[nolongerusestheforum]

Thank you SO MUCH, all of you!!!