Opinions on featured content and why it bothers me

r0ckrabbi7 2016-07-12 10:16:37 UTC #61

Let me paraphrase that: they do not feel bothered by the content of Learning Curves, since they themselves are a person that produces content which might be seen as inappropriate to a certain target. So trying to bash it into his head as to why Learning Curves is bad will do nothing, yet a good portion of people keep arguing with him, even if it is already quite obvious by his replies that it is a fruitless effort - everyone remains firmly by their beliefs.

Zikul 2016-07-12 10:19:16 UTC #62

A discussion doesn't have to change peoples minds, and they are just as much for viewers as the people involved. If I only talked to people who listened to me, I would do very little talking - however, I talk just as much to evolve my own thoughts, as I do for the benefit of others.

Roxanneh 2016-07-12 10:24:19 UTC #63

Let me give you a context to why Tapastic endorses this. Contrary to what you may think, the writers are not men with fetishes but two women working as actresses/tv writers, which is why:
* The story has plenty of CAPITALIZED BOLD (for names and places) and CAPITALIZED ITALIC (for actions and effects), because that's how tv writer writes a script.
* The story is your typical MTV reality tv show.
* The pictures look like storyboard images.

They have no background in webcomics, and judging by how they use tv script's techniques to write these tapisodes they clearly have no idea about what a webcomic/light novel is. I'm guessing that the story itself was a failed tv show pitch reformatted as tapisodes.

As you can see from the screenshots that @BlueWindyHood posted, they didn't bother to rewrite it so it fits the new medium better, which is a sign of their lack of care and love for the medium. I saw the writers' twitters and they didn't endorse their own work to their 14k+ (combined) followers, just a re-tweet of Tapastic's tweet mentioning their product. Not a single, "Hey, it's my work, please check it out!" from them, not even some enthusiasm, "Cool, it's up!" or something, which is odd and only further proves that they don't care, about Tapastic, about webcomic, or even about their own story.

How can writers with no love, care, skills, and history in webcomics get to be published, endorsed and financially backed by one of the biggest webcomic platform? Turns out they're friends with people at Tapastic, Tapastic said so themselves.

Take in existing stories, make them mobile friendly

To create the first batch of Tapisodes, we worked with some of our friends over at Hollywood and brought in their scripts.

Scripts are good “base stories” for Tapisodes, because scripts are written to be produced into movies and TV dramas and therefore are essentially made of bare-bones scene descriptions and dialogues. While authors mostly rely on imagery and comic creators mostly rely on images, scriptwriters must rely on performance in order to share their stories and vision.

If you think about it, a vast majority of scripts haven’t been made into movies and TV dramas yet for a number of reasons, including lack of budget, resources, technology, etc. So what are those stories doing? Probably sitting in someone’s drawer, waiting to get discovered one day and finally see the light of the day. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make those scripts mobile friendly and distribute them to mass audience? That’s part of what we want to experiment with Tapisodes."

My suspicion was true (I wish I had read the announcement beforehand), the story was a failed tv show pitch reformatted as tapepisodes. They said that the scripts are good 'base stories' but they didn't even change ANYTHING to make it more reader friendly despite promising to make them mobile friendly.

The reason why scripts use capitalized bolds and italics is so they're easier to spot, because you don't want to read the whole thing again when you're just trying to find something in that one particular scene. It has no purpose in this new medium, it gives casual readers discomfort and it distracts them from the story.

It makes me question which comes first, the tapisode idea or the script? Did the 'tapisode' idea was born to justify the reformat of the script? It seems so, because:
* There are SO MANY great unappreciated scripts posted in the internet where the writers are waiting for someone to buy them at very little cost, so why choose these particular writers aside from them 'being friends'?
* **The story has underage children sex as part of it's theme, it's borderline CP material that can go wrong very fast or attract unintended audience****. Why didn't they choose 'safer' scripts for their FIRST test product while they will ALWAYS choose 'safer' options with webcomics?
* Why, despite telling us that the script is 'a base story' they proceeded to copy paste the entire script for their new product? It's as if the product was made for the scripts. If Tapisode was created for it's own sake, the script would follow Tapisode rules, not vice versa.

Writing a script for people to shoot and writing stories for people to read is a totally different thing that needs different skillset to work. So the case here is it seems like some people in Tapastic wants to endorse their friends, or they want to borrow 'Hollywood' name to make Tapas app looks grand (hint: the writers worked for BuzzFeed, some 'Hollywood' people they are), but their friends only have scripts, not webcomics, so they created a whole new product to justify this.

So you know now that rules don't mean a thing for Tapastic. It applies to the rest of us but don't apply to their friends. Tapastic wants quality (aka popular) story/webcomics from us but they absolutely don't care when it comes to works from their friends. Tapastic is strict with NSFW works, they won't endorse you and you might even get banned, but their friends can publish borderline CP material and they'll endorse the hell out of it, even at the expense of their own company.

Just look at michaelson's reply, there's nothing that addresses the issue why they chose to publish this story despite violating their own guidelines. They'll push this cringe-worthy story executed in a lazy and uncreative way to the death even if nobody wants it and everyone hates it while the hard working artists with original and creative works are blatantly ignored, left alone on their own.

This is not a problem of 'inappropriate content/censorship' this is, plain and simple, nepotism at it's best. You're beyond disappointing with your double standard and hypocrisy, Tapas/Tapastic. I'll uninstall the app and tell all my friends to use adblocks from now on. I'm done with you.

Also,

The team here just simply doesn’t do poor quality. It’s not in our DNA. We make things we are proud of and things we would be excited to use and recommend to our friends and family. ---Josh Bakken, Senior Director of Tapas Media

Please tell us how proud you are of this work of yours and I'll probably share it with my friends just to see how hard they will cringe.

TomSawyer 2016-07-12 10:38:13 UTC #64

That is just hilarious

noxfox 2016-07-12 11:04:30 UTC #65

I must say this saddens me. I've been wondering, if the staff has a friend who engineers tractors, are we soon going to have a tractor section on the App? Because you know, tractors are an awesome way to tell stories. While I think that supporting your friends is good, I think there's a time and place for everything, and it quite feels like the staff got kind of screwed by their relations. Creating tapisodes out of the blue was unneeded, and I can only see this "medium" crash to the ground. Even publishers don't like to read scripts, because it's boring and clunky no matter how much you try to visually ease the read. It's a tool, not a finished product. If this format was good, it would already exist.

And wait, actually, it does. RPers have relied on this for a long time, and it's often not the best sort of RP in matter of artistic value.

And this. Well, that tells a lot indeed. When I contacted Jacquie Taylor after the newsletter release, I had this strong feeling she would not reply, and indeed, she didn't. Quite a sad thing to introduce a new feature with edgy content, and authors who don't even support the product and won't engage with the community... If I were Tapastic staff, I would be seriously infuriated at them and at myself for getting fooled like this.

Next time the newsletter comes up, I hope it'll be to tell us that we're finally getting wall notifications working, or that the community will be audited to create the new NSFW filter upgrade, or... just anything that the community has been asking for, really.

gateofselidor 2016-07-12 12:25:12 UTC #66

Questionable content aside, the screenshots posted above were really awkward to read. Seeing that it's actually a barely-repurposed TV show script I can understand why it looks like it does, but I had been imagining the Tapisodes would be more like the later chapters of Best Friends Forever, a webcomic that transitioned into a text + sketch format (see: http://bffcomic.com/ch/CH15.html), which actually works really well.

Beebutts 2016-07-12 13:18:00 UTC #67

Yes, Consuming Darkness is in question. ^^ Thank you for taking time to reply.
I think you have featured BDSM works before however, they just might not have been tagged as so..

UzukiCheverie 2016-07-12 13:58:08 UTC #68

Hey everyone!

I'm interrupting the discussion here with just a quick little reminder to keep the discussion civil. I've been seeing some dirt getting thrown back and forth in between the debates and discussions, and I think we can all agree it's unnecessary. We know what we're discussing here so there's no need to be getting sidetracked by personal attacks or grudges. Most of us are creators, but all of us are Tapastic users and readers at the very least, so we all have very important points to make and we shouldn't be disregarding each other's opinions based on our own opinions of them.

That being said, you are not required to reply to this thread so if you're only contributing for the sake of agitating the fire rather than containing it and keeping it safe, then I'd advise you to step away from the keyboard for a bit and take a breather before you post; it's pretty easy to get wrapped up in these debates and take things one step too far.

Finally, while I agree with a lot of the points being made here on BOTH sides, we still don't know what's going to be happening with the Tapisodes. This was just one series that had unfortunate results due to its advertising. This one comic in particular does not and shouldn't represent Tapastic's intentions/goals for the program (though it's definitely a rough first impression for it, I'll admit), and I'd hate to see this one slip-up change everyone's mindsets about Tapastic in such a short instance. There's only so much we know while the rest is assumption/guesswork so let's please not get too wrapped up in the theories as if they're fact - because we just don't know. Maybe these guesses are true, maybe they're completely false - but we don't know. So long as we don't know these things, while we can theorize/wonder about what Tapastic is doing all we like, what their plans are for us, etc. even with something backing it up, let's not jump ship over a few people calling shark.

Please continue the discussion as normal and on-topic. If you have a dispute about this mod note, please consult me via PM. Thank you everyone - Uzuki

EDIT: I'd also like to remind peeps that the original topic was about the validity of featured content and what should/shouldn't be featured (with Learning Curves used as an example) not so much Tapastic's intentions with Tapisodes and other new features. I'll say it a final time - we just don't know. That includes the mod team as well - I know we're "staff" but we're not company staff, we don't help with the development of the app or website, we don't make any of the decisions Tapastic has made, we're simply peacekeepers for the forums - we know just as much as you guys do, which is very, very little.

noxfox 2016-07-12 14:28:16 UTC #69

It would be good indeed to have a staff reply, to get answers to all the questions that were brought up. While I agree that one bad work shouldn't represent all of Tapastic, it still speaks quite loud for Tapas as it aligns in the trajectory of porn novels and other works that have been advertised for in the successive newsletters. With each new one I got, I felt a little more alienated, as if each of them was a hammer blow fracturing appart Tapastic and Tapas –I do feel like those two worlds have become very unalike in matter of content and atmosphere.

The issue here is still quite grave, given that this content is the sort that most people are absolutely grossed out by. It's grave enough for me to question whether I want to stay on Tapastic or not, because I would be absolutely mad if a series of mine like Consuming Darkness were to be promoted next to Learning Curves. With all the effort we put into making it as safe and healthy as possible, even for readers who are not familiar with the BDSM themes, I would be very disgruntled to see this work ruined by prejudice –we're already getting a fair bit of it just because we are being honest and upfront about the BDSM label (unlike most stories on Tapastic containing BDSM themes, often unhealthy).
If Tapas is going to be a haven of unhealthy material, I'm not sure I want my works to be available through it.

This said, I'll be waiting for clarifications and a note of intention for the future of the App, its content, and the content getting to be featured.

Zikul 2016-07-12 14:31:06 UTC #70

It would be very comforting indeed, if staff could dement the compromising claims...

UzukiCheverie 2016-07-12 14:51:08 UTC #71

Hey guys, me again. It was my plan to only leave one note, but after seeing your following posts and consulting the rest of the mod team, we're going to go ahead and lock this thread - after everything that's been talked about so far, it's going to be very difficult for everyone to get back on topic (and I say this out of understanding).

This thread will be locked, HOWEVER it will remain listed and in the meantime, we will be seeing about getting an actual Tapastic staff member to step forward and address your concerns further. Afterwards, the thread will continue to be locked - any further unanswered questions or concerns can be brought up with the Tapastic staff or mod team (though if you bring up Tapastic-related issues specifically with us, we'll probably just forward them ahead to Tapastic lol if it's a forum related question though or if you just need someone to talk to, we're here to help.)

Thanks for your understanding, everybody. I hope everyone has their concerns and questions addressed so we can put this to rest once and for all. Y'all are the best <3 - Uzuki

UzukiCheverie 2016-07-12 14:51:12 UTC #72

michaelson 2016-07-12 17:23:19 UTC #73

This topic is now unlisted. It will no longer be displayed in any topic lists. The only way to access this topic is via direct link.

michaelson 2016-07-12 22:04:49 UTC #74

I'll be responding to questions and comments later tomorrow.

I'll decided to unlist the topic because of its toxic nature and have decided to leave it closed for now. I'll be re-opening the topic and listing it again once I've issued a response.

If you have any other questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to e-mail me at michaelson@tapasmedia.co

michaelson 2016-07-14 05:23:07 UTC #75

I wanted to apologize to everyone that has been personally affected by the featuring of Learning Curves. It has become clear that unwanted pregnancy is a very personal issue to many of you. And moving forward, it will be a topic for us to avoid featuring.

I wanted to address the statements @Roxanneh made first, since all of them are speculative and overall are quite harmful. I will try my best to answer as many questions and comments beyond that as possible.

This was not a failed tv show, it was a pilot script that was being sought after by other studios and there was care put into the construction of the series. Most creators don't set out to make bad work.

The pull quote that you reference from the medium article "If you think about it, a vast majority of scripts haven't been made into movies and TV dramas yet... Probably sitting in someone's drawer" is meant to illustrate the number of stories potentially out there, and not meant as a reference to Learning Curves. There are other Tapisodes in the works.

These creators aren't obligated to mention us in a social media post. The absence of them mentioning us shouldn't be indicative of their how much they care about the platform or their own story. There are a lot of creators we feature or publish with us that don't mention us in social media.

There was reformatting added to the Tapisodes based on the scripts. I.e. certain descriptions being taken out and others being added in, how the dialogue appears, and etc. The inclusion of character faces next to the dialogue among other things are indicative that the scripts have been modified.

The creators of Learning Curves are working on a show for Amazon titled "Just Add Magic" and writing for Buzzfeed shouldn't be something to cruelly ridicule. And to speculate that we only featured them because they were our friends is absurd. We have professional working relationship with agencies and publishers that introduce us to creators and works.

I'll reference a previous response made in a topic titled "The future of NSFW":

It was chosen to be in the daily snack because of the engagement the series was receiving. Based on views, comments, likes, subscribes and purchases.

I have featured countless hard working artists with original and creative works. We've featured over 100 different artists, many of whom had very little subscribers to begin with over the course of the past year in the spotlight banner of Tapastic and we've cycled through over 70 unique series in the app banners, and we've only started with the relaunch of the Daily Snack, but already featured many series without an audience.

And in the previous version of the app, we featured over 800 different creators in the daily snack...

We increased the rotations of both the Popular and Trending Section and have featured older works in the Staff Picks that we might have missed. To say that we blatantly ignore original creative work is just wrong.

We have to understand that there are over 40 series created daily, there was a day when there were over 640 episode uploaded.
Can we feature everyone? Unfortunately no, but we are trying our best.

This doesn't dismiss the fact that we do make mistakes. And featuring Learning Curves is clearly that, a mistake. My intention as an editor is not to upset you, it's not to make you uncomfortable, or to personally attack you. I've tried my best to combat those things. But I recognize that many people were and are offended by the work, and I apologize that it was placed in front of you.

We will continually evolve our editorial style based on the feedback we've been given, as has always been the case.

edit: I'll be responding to comments and questions tomorrow. Apologies.

michaelson 2016-07-14 05:23:15 UTC #76

michaelson 2016-07-14 05:23:16 UTC #77

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JessJackdaw 2016-07-14 06:18:12 UTC #78

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Michaelson.

While featuring Learning Curves was probably a mistake, there were likely people out there that really enjoyed reading it on their Snack.

So the issue is that there is no way to engineer one Snack that suits everyone's tastes. Now I know you're working towards customized Snaks for each individual (or something similar), but wouldn't it be easier to just make genre Snacks? For example, if I liked Fantasy I'd sign up to recieve the Fantasy daily Snack that had the cream of the fantasy catagory. Maybe there could be a NSFW only comics Snack as well.

This way we avoid possible controversy when a touchy NSFW comic is sent to everyone.

It might be a good temporary fix instead of a complex algorithm that gathers all the genres a user reads and spits out a perfect fit. Maybe what I've described is actually what's currently being worked on, if so, great!

Even if customization is extremely basic starting out (just picking one catagory you like or choosing whether you mind NSFW or not), I think it could help a great deal.

Edit: Also more spitballing of ideas. Perhaps there could be combined genre pools to sign up for such as:

Surprise Snack (a general Snack, all genres)
Speculative Snack (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror)
The Love Snack (Romance only)
Suspenseful Snack (Mystery, Drama)
Snack Attack (Action, Gaming)
Laugh Snack (Slice of Life, Comedy)

Then possibly a NSFW toggle or a Snack dedicated to just NSFW episodes/comics.

keii4ii 2016-07-14 06:59:56 UTC #79

While this is a good suggestion, I feel this is rather off topic for this particular issue. The issue wasn't that people didn't like the genre. It wasn't that the story was unexpectedly NSFW; though it does seem to have NSFW content, that's not what people were upset about. It's this:

The story centers around an extremely sensitive topic. A lot of people do not want to see this topic handled, unless done with the utmost care in every single way; even then it's like walking on eggshells for reasons that are completely understandable. I'm glad that Tapastic recognizes the issue, and hope this experience will help them avoid similar problems in the future.

JessJackdaw 2016-07-14 07:22:20 UTC #80

@keii4ii Oh, I understand this completely, Keii. I'm actually highly discomforted by the comic it myself. The difference is that a warning or possibly some sort of barrier, might prevent this issue from happening again.

This comic would've never blown up like it did if it wasn't featured as a daily Snack. (Sure, Tapastic also featured it as a frontrunner for Tapisodes, but that's another kettle of fish.) The issue is that it was sent to everyone and possibly influenced young teens that didn't follow the Tapastic guidelines. This sensitive content was highly unwelcomed by the masses for good reason, so my suggestions were an attempt to address this problem.

If you know you might get comics that contain some unsafe material (such as a NSFW warning), then you are the one in control not an automated system. Not all NSFW content is this extreme but it is the easiest fix to the problem. So if you signed up to possibly get content that could contain mature content or sensitive themes, then the user would be held accountable for that decision. It's not a pretty fix, but it's worth addressing because it's certainly possible Tapastic's algorithm could spit out another sensitive subject comic as a feature yet again. D: