Soooo, Not Killing The Forum Huh?

[cherrystark]

Not gonna lie. I'm not excited about the move over to discord. I tried it out for a little bit and got super overwhelmed. I've been on chat platforms before and got lost in the mess of conversations. Admittedly, Discord might be different than other chat platforms but I like how relatively chill the environment in the forums is. For people who get easily overwhelmed, the organization is nice.

[kwestlake99]

I don't follow. They're shutting the forum down?

[DiegoPalacios]

Tapas claims that they aren't, but their actions lately seem like a subtle attempt at getting rid of it.

[kwestlake99]

What kind of actions?

[DiegoPalacios]

1-Placing the link to the forum way on the bottom of the Tapas page

2-Pushing all promotions and events on the discord, including inksgiving.

3-Only answering tech support on said discord. (i had to go to the discord to share the topics about bugs and glitches)

4-A general miscommunication and lack of transparency about the previous points

5-maybe there's more? (if i missed anything new, feel free to add it)

in my book, actions speak louder than words.

[kwestlake99]

Yeah, that doesn't sound good.

[joannekwan]

They aren't. As they stated in the pinned post about tech support, they aren't getting rid of the forum.
I mean, I could say the same thing too but I'm sure folks will still doubt my words.

[crowstories]

Yeah, that's what bothers me... I'm on the discord, and while I rarely venture out of the writing and novels channel, I've enjoyed connecting with other creators there, and have found some new readers as well.

However, there was some really helpful content in the tech support section of the forums -- content that mostly other creators had spent time putting together, and which could have been locked and kept as a useful resource. Regardless of where future questions go, it's really frustrating that all of that work and information was suddenly deleted.

[Azifri]

Not your words, tapas words. Like, remember when they said in an announcement that they weren't being bought by kakao, and a week or so later made another announcement saying that they were? Things like that, which I'm sure you know too because you're more active than me on this site ^^

[joannekwan]

Yeah, I believe that incident is why they are being more vague with their announcements now. Because things do change quickly in the tech world, so something that may be true in a week will be different the next.
It's like how app store rules keep changing so the ToS has to keep evolving, so the site can't make any promises that certain things will always be protected.

[kwestlake99]

If they do, they better at least give us the courtesy of a heads-up.

[fsarbolaez]

Kakao? What's that? What does Kakao do?

[Lilmonstart]

I´m not even a year old here on tapas but I think the forums were like it´s best feauture? it really dissapoints me, I freaked out when the forums button was gone
and to top it off I don´t like discord xd

Couldn´t they just add the discord server as an extra option instead of replacing the forums buttom with it?(Like I get it everyones uses it and it´s on trend)
And it really is awful how they want to solve everything through the discord server >:(.

The Forums are Obsolete now :(.

[HGohwell]

One of things I find hardest to believe about all this is the idea Tapas had no idea there might be a backlash to taking away something else from the Forum. Like, ok sure, maybe it is better and more efficient like that (although I still think saying "you can still email" for the people who think it's kind of rude to ask us to download an app just to reach tech support would be nice) but the idea that they had no idea this might spark concern feels like they've not been paying attention, or are using it as an excuse. The idea that Tapas has been winding down the forums isn't a new one. It came up when Tapas opened Tapastry and started focusing on a separate social media presence, it happened when the discord was opened, it happened when the forum link was moved to a less obvious place, so it's not new. And every time it's brought up Tapas assures us it's not true and they still love the forum and want to support it, until they take something else away or make more events that you have to be part of discord for and nowhere else (and advertise them on the forum they took them away from no less!).

So, I do find it hard to believe after so many incidents of causing concern that the forum is closing and telling us it's not, they didn't foresee maybe this would spark that concern too. Because why would a recurring trend that happens every time Tapas announces movement away from the forums possibly happen with this announcement they're moving something else away from the forums? What exactly has Tapas done to reassure us the forum isn't closing beyond words with no action behind it and continuing to focus everywhere but the forums? And sure, I can buy that they don't mean the forums to close, but surely someone realises the optics of the situation? Surely someone realises if you constantly focus everywhere else, put all your support everywhere else, focus solely on the discord and then start taking things away from the forum, maybe it looks like you're focusing on the discord and don't care about the forum and are trying to force people onto discord?

If all events and support are going to be on discord from now on, say so loud and clear, because we're not seeing it here on the forums and right now it feels like the actions are speaking pretty loudly.

[rajillustration]

I'm more surprised that discord seemed like a better place to put tech support than like an email. Like obviously the email still exists and has always existed, but part of the reason people came here to the forum with their tech issues was because they had problems that the emails weren't answering, or they were trying to tag on twitter and they weren't answering.

Posting to the forums they could @ someone directly with a pretty public announcement of their disapproval when something big breaks (and we've had some large breaks in the past) or when like when something scary happens like their ink getting stolen out of their account was meant to be public. My big concern is that this also hides a lot of the tech issues from other people who can see it.

And in the end, I dunno if removing a category would even move people who need tech help from the forum, we're still going to have people coming here when the site breaks or they lose their account or money, and they're still going to make posts and @ everyone they can because like...they won't care if there's technically no tech support here, they're still going to raise their concerns.

[IndigoShirtProd]

While I believe you when you say that they say that the forums aren't closing, like @HGohwell implied, the optics are bad. Like this isn't a good look, and it's strange that they don't seem to realize this. I don't want to think the worst of the Tapas staff, nor do I think there's any ill-intent or even purposeful misleading being done here, I'm just saying that if there was a bag in this situation, someone's fumbling.

[allenT]

Yeah, also something i noticed at the bottom when adding a new thread (same thing with this thread)

I thought that this only applied for new members... This better not happen to other forum catergories.

[VibrantFox]

yeah that part was addressed here

Also about the 30 day closure thing: All threads will now be automatically locked after 30 days of inactivity (no new posts). This is a new implement to deter spammers from rezzing old threads. It's not a retroactive feature, so if any threads made prior to this date are rezzed, please feel free to flag them and they will be closed.

so it does look likely to become a normal thing. maybe not the best solution but at this point it's just tiring trying to put much faith in this place

[vothnthorvaldson]

Tapas can say that they won't close the forums, without entirely lying, as it's pretty clear their stategy is to get the forums to die by themselves, thus avoiding backlash or having to take responsibility.
The forums died when the button was removed. Now it's just a matter of time. But because it does not go fast enough for Tapas' taste, they remove random forum perk or functionalities to quicken the death.
Eventually there will be so little traffic that Tapas will decide it is time to close them for good, but there will be little backlash because there will be only a few users left.
Smart. Disrespectful, but smart.

[CarltonIsaac]