Hey hi hello!
Wanted to pop in the forums and talk a little bit about some gradual changes that will be coming to how we will try and better surface more relevant series to readers.
So tags.
It's been the topic of many discussions and has been something that our team has been wrapping our heads around for quite some time. As you might have noticed, we have various levels of tagging and indexing on Tapas.
Okay, let me rewind. Indexing is how search works on Tapas - it's how our system takes a keyword and tries to look for it. There are a couple of key things that are currently indexed: Series Title, Series Tag, and Display Name. As we move forward, we want to try and index other areas such as Episode Tags, and potentially Series Descriptions.
That being said, we're fully aware that due to the lack of functionality of the Episode Tags, creators have been utilizing it in a variety of different ways. We'll be working with creators to better educate them on how Episode Tags will be used in the future and how they can make the most out of it.
With this move towards faster search and easier access, we've had to make the decision to blacklist certain keywords from being indexed. These keywords are primarily adult oriented. We'll be working with creators on giving them feedback on what alternative tags they'll be able to use.
We've been experimenting with tag based curation for the past month on future builds of the app and have done smaller scale experiments on the front page of the current app. We'll be testing more tag based curating, one that we've been playing with is an open tag system where you'll be able to tag your episode with certain "tags of the day" (i.e. Caturday), and if your episode is relevant to the topic, it'll appear in a feed style page. We'll also be taking tag suggestions from the community.
Let me know what you think about tags, and post some screenshots of some interesting or funny uses of episode tags! My current favorite use is A BETTER PLACE: https://tapas.io/series/A-BETTER-PLACE
-Michael