POSSIBLE July Writers' Camp Winners? Discussion~

[Croik]

There was some concern about cheating and bots before... can't say for sure but given that both Lucille and Dark Silence have a LOT of subscribers who just joined this August, maybe Tapas ran an analysis and determined that those were actually bot accounts and thus those series were cheating?

If Tapas has a way of identifying bots, fair enough. And it could be that they were skipped over because Tapas just didn't care for the style or subject matter.

But Lucille's author did have followings on multiple social media sites, so if that influx of subs were legit from fans and friends, I don't see why they should be considered cheating. An author's ability to drawn in NEW readers to the site is exactly what Tapas wants from premium content. And I don't know about Dark Silence's author but I did see them get a shout out from another creator with over 2k subs, which would definitely explain any boost they got. Nothing but respect for the winners, but I do feel bad for these guys.

But that's the nature of a contest based on subs. If the system is that easily exploitable (or even if Tapas is inclined to believe it is) better they just do judge's picks from now on.

[Shadowcat]

I agree with just doing judges picks. People here are obsessed with bl (no harm in that, so am I), but that leads to very little variety. If the winners are purely judges picks, then there would be more variety, which never hurts. Or they could have four winners again, but make one of them based on subs and choose the others.

[Croik]

How about we promote the idea that the judges should pick the stories they truly believe are the best/most likely to succeed on Tapas and leave whether or not they're BL out of it.

[raekitano]

But Lucille's author did have followings on multiple social media sites

When Lucille's followers spiked I looked into their social media accounts out of curiosity.
I wonder if anyone else did?
I'm not sure if mentioning this is the right thing to do. But the mum in me has some concerns with the content of some of their accounts, especially the Tumblr link in their Tapas profile. In the menu of that Tumblr page are two links to accounts that are rather questionable.

I'm sure Tapas did their research also.

[Croik]

They are a horror author. So I don't see why liking/posting often about what's currently a very popular horror comic should make a difference to anything (assuming it's the K/S you're referring to).

The point being, Tapas has plenty of times recruited novels from Wattpad and other sites in an effort to bring those authors and their existing audience over. So I don't think anyone should be penalized for doing the same on their own, unless there's some other reason to believe the accounts really are bots and not just first time users.

[Shadowcat]

oh wait, I'm sorry. I wasn't implying that they need to not be bl, I was just pointing out that, on average, series with bl tags get more attention and subs than other series, so that's why choosing series based off subs doesn't really allow for variety.

[OneHappyChap]

@Shadowcat I had deleted my comment because it wasn't really relevant to the convo anymore but appearantly now it is so I'll just repost it: There are currently only ten BL novels in the novels premium section in comparison to the other genres, which more or less have over ten pages for each genre, so it is actually making the premium section more varied in that sense!

[Alex9Wolf9]

Um, no. There are more BL novels as premiums but do not have the BL tag, they have the romance tag.

[OneHappyChap]

Ah, my bad I hadn't noticed, I take that back then. But in either case, is there anything wrong with BL being included in the winners' entries? There was a lot of BL entered this Camp (if I'm wrong on that too feel free to correct me though as I'm only typing this from memory and didn't double check), so in terms of statistics and percentages there was a higher chance for more BL novels to be chosen and I don't feel as if people are taking this into account.

[ratscout]

The winners we got, are of course, completely deserving, but I'm not gonna lie; I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get a nice surprise winner with very little subscribers and stuff like Bad Lands from last time~!

Also, I noticed that the staff commented on the winners' work while the camp was still running XD. I think next time they should probably leave it more of a surprise as to who will win by not commenting people's stuff while the contest is still running, haha.

[OneHappyChap]

Really, they did? I don't think I got a comment from staff when I was participating. (Unless I missed it, then I am so sorry to the fellow staff member... )

[Alex9Wolf9]

Not really, there were a few, but they are all on top of the list, because -- as @Shadowcat wanted to simply say-- BL is popular among the readers.

[ratscout]

I should have specified the staff-pick wins, not the popular wins XD

[OneHappyChap]

Well, I can't deny that. Anyway, here's to hoping next Camp will also bring in more writers to this awesome community!

[OneHappyChap]

Ohh, okay I see, that makes a lot more sense! I think it's awesome that they did runner's up this time too, can't wait to see what next Camp has in store!

[Penni]

Deleted my comment cause I should have read everything first

[OneHappyChap]

Oh, what happened?
(There's so much deleting going on in this thread my god. )

[Penni]

I was about to be like "who was getting comment to the Staff cause it wasn't me"

[OneHappyChap]

same™

(just going to make this longer to complete the 20 character offering)

[Alex9Wolf9]

Serena commented on Violin's novel, but I think it's just because she likes it. She commented on more novels from the camp