Popular's first page nothing but premium, mistake? or "problem?"

[BobbyjoeX]

so, one of my friends has noticed on Tapas, the popular page's usual free to read first pagers have been shot to the second page and was replaced with Premium comics. was this a glitch or are free to read comics not "worth" to be on the first page anymore?

Legitimate question

[kip]

tapas has an algorithm to determine what's popular at the moment, its likely that the premium comics just feed into it better at the moment. i wouldnt really read too much into it without giving it some time to see if it stays that way

[joannekwan]

Oh yeah! I just checked and they are all premium on the first page.
This has never happened before.

Maybe it is a glitch?
I wish the STAFF tag wasn't going defunct since I don't want to tag Michael specifically about this right now before we have a few more hours to monitor it … >_>

[JackOfArtAndProse]

Doesn't popular tab update, like, once a day or so? If so, it doesn't sound like a far fetch for premium comics to dominate the section(although I strongly suspect this is all temporary).

EDIT: I re-read all the comments. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to at least observe for a few days. If it's a false alarm, I think we'll all be happy that it is. If it isn't...

...Well, I find that highly unlikely, but we'll rest better after a few days, I figure. XD

[jensrichard77]

Well we can’t blame a popular premium to be popular can we?
As I see it, if everyone is reading the premiums, it will be on popular, wouldn't it?

[VibrantFox]

is it possible that its a result of the instagram promo code event going on (the one that gives free episodes to like 50 of the premium comics) i wouldn't be surprised if that might have a connection

[ar-ninetysix]

Yeah, this was bugging me yesterday.. I was looking for new stuff to read and the community tab was just gone?? I actually wanna avoid the premium stuff as there's hardly anything there that interests me beyond the free episodes they let you read (and there's so much romance.. like damn lol)

Almost all the stuff I read on Tapas has been from the little guys with like under 20k subs and I prefer that bc I'm sure they won't require me to get invested enough in a handful of episodes enough to pay for dozens of episodes, sometimes hundreds. i think it'd be nice if they gave us a way to customize what's on the home page instead of taking something useful away and try to add small series to the banner.. it's like what just one a day compared to a whole section dedicated to 'em? I'd rather have a look at that section!

[jensrichard77]

Oh... So how long is that campaign?
BC it will be bad to start a new project now I think?
No change to compete with that

[spicy_sweets]

There was a bug going on where everyone who used the code was automatically subbed to the top 50 premium comics, so that's related definitely

[LordVincent]

This most likely is the result of a recent bug. Not a campaign.
Some users are suddenly subscribed to comics they don't read and my stats for Crimson tracks look like this.

Now before anyone starts making wild accusations or conspiracy theories (because that is what I saw elsewhere and why I went on the forums to contribute my experience to the discussion) THERE IS NOTHING FOR TAPAS OR THE AFFECTED COMICS TO GAIN IN FALSELY OBTAINED SUBS. Dead subs are hurtful to a comic's ratings and stats long term and people who are unwillingly subbed to a thing are likely to form negative associations to that thing, meaning they may never read the comic even if they may have wanted to otherwise. If Tapas wanted productive subs sent to these people, they would promo the comics so people could see and come to the comics on their own.

[jensrichard77]

Thank you.. We can all sleep now

[JackOfArtAndProse]

I think there was a post here on the forums that they fixed the bug already, so everything should be back to normal within a week or so. Possibly even in 24 hours(but give it a week, since I think the popularity page gauges popularity over a certain period of time).

[LordVincent]

I don't know about mobile, but the desktop page bases its results off of the last 24 hours only.

[JackOfArtAndProse]

Thanks for the clarification. And I think it's the same for both the desktop page and the app.