Tapastic Award idea

[ChipGod]

Hey guys, I'm relatively new here. But I've gotten a bunch of ideas to share. Have awards ever been given, or is it possible to have a like a weekly/monthly award episode or thread?
People could nominate comics, and have others vote on them.
Ex: Comedy for November: ____[
Romance for November:_____
This could've been done already, but if not would it be possible?
And, is it a good idea? Give m feedback on this idea please.
Thank you

[UrMom]

I don't see why not. Smackjeeves used to do a yearly awards thing back in the day. It just takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you want to get people who don't use the forum to notice. DrunkDuck/TheDuckWebcomics also did a yearly award thing, not sure if they still do since the site kind of died, and I haven't been there for a while. But the awards thing was a big event for their site.

If you can get enough volunteers, you should go for it!

[sarrowsmith10]

It might be worth sending MichaelSon (owner of Tapastic) and see if its something Tapastic might be able to do on an official level. Although I suspect, if you want awards you'll need to organize it yourself and gather a bunch of volunteers. Call it "Luke's Yearly Awards" or something. Take ownership of it. Use Google forms or something to allow for a voting platform/nomination platform or something.

Sounds like a good idea to me, but who knows?

[keii4ii]

This is always nice in idea, but difficult to pull off. My belief is you don't want the awards to fuel competitiveness; we already have enough of that. If it's to be a competition, at the very least it needs to be fair, but fairness is not easy to achieve. e.g. Voting system = popularity contest rather than a measure of quality.

There is an award thing going on, BTW, for the year of 2016. It's the one where you have to submit your own comic (can't nominate other people's), and the judges select the winners based on their own criteria. That at least eliminates the popularity contest aspect. But since their categories are limited, a different award event with different categories would be a nice addition to the webcomic community.

[ChipGod]

If you can get enough volunteers, you should go for it!

Thanks! Ill see if its possible, then go from there

[ChipGod]

There is an award thing going on, BTW, for the year of 2016. It's the one where you have to submit your own comic (can't nominate other people's), and the judges select the winners based on their own criteria. That at least eliminates the popularity contest aspect.

I heard about that, but i had a few problems with it. We dont know who the judges are, or how many. From there its a popularity contest aswell. If this idea kicks off, then i will figure out a way how it wont be this way

[ChipGod]

It might be worth sending MichaelSon (owner of Tapastic) and see if its something Tapastic might be able to do on an official level

Thats probably a good idea. Thanks!

[spooktacularprize]

I like this idea, but I agree with a "qualified judges" system rather than voting system; bc of the popularity contest and subsequent uncomfortable competition (this kind of occurs on LINE sometimes). I'd like to keep the unified community feel but maybe have a bunch of judges from a variety of artistic backgrounds to evaluate the comics on different parameters rather than create something that might cause animosity between members on the site. : )

[ChipGod]

Thats true, but what if the judges play favorites?

[heterodont]

i think thats the point of having a group of judges from different backgrounds, because its very unlikely all of them would play favorites.

as nice an idea it is, I can't help but disagree with it. Frankly, it's already annoying enough seeing 20000 threads about how someone's newly made comic isn't already super popular and how they can fix that - I can't imagine how many more would be made that's just "I didn't get picked for this award for my comic that i made a few days ago - what am i doing wrong?"

[dojo]

Unfortunately there's no such thing as a perfect system where bias and playing favorites isn't a possibility. It either becomes a popularity contest or risk judges being bias. (I mean, of course they're going to be judging based on their own criteria, because that's what they know best) A good way to avoid that might be trying to make sure all your judges come from different walks of life, have different areas of expertise, and don't know a damn thing about each other besides maybe seeing their work around occasionally. But that's really be easier said than done. But even if you had this perfect system people might still accuse the judges. Art's just waaaaaaaaaay too subjective, and not something that can be measured, so no matter what you do there's always going to be that one guy calling foul.

Iunno, it's tricky. I personally don't like contests a whole lot in the first place, because I've seen more feelings get hurt over them and negativity stir up over winners than I have people being positive and supportive so it's left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't like the whole "but the thing I liked best didn't win therefore everything that did win sucks and the winners should feel bad". It sucks and ruins the whole point in the contest in the first place, which was to show off stuff you might not have known about and make people feel good and get recognized.

Like @heterodont said, it's a nice idea. I don't think it's a terrible one at all, despite anything I said previously. If I trusted people to stay positive and not knock themselves down and feel bad over artificial measurement, I'd think a contest could be pretty fun. But it's just the negativity that every contest I've participated in had that kills it for me. If you wanna put the effort into setting one up, I think you should go for it. I may not participate, but I'll gladly be everyone's cheerleader from the sidelines.

[joannekwan]

What would the criteria even be? If it's just straight numbers, then the popular and trending categories already have that covered with their algorithms. If there are judges, then it's still going to be subjective. Where will these judges come from? What makes them qualified to judge? Just things to think about before launching any sort of contest.

[GoldenPlume]

We're mostly against this idea because its so hard to make it unbiased and non-hostile. Look at LINE for example and the whole down voting issue. We do not want to see Tapastic become LINE where there is so much competition and negative vibes. That just detracts from our site and community as a whole.

If people are looking for a way to "grade" themselves against other series, go with subs numbers. And concerning the whole subs numbers thing there's already enough competition and angst as it is. Do we really need more of that?

Maybe people are thinking if they won a competition then wow they would get tons more subs . . . but if there was a competition that is judged, then staff would handle that, and guess what, staff is judging us every day. Those competition awards are called, "Spotlight", "Staff Pick", and "Daily Snack." Note how certain series end up in Daily Snack day after day after day? We can name over a dozen that have been featured 3+ times already, some even approaching 10 times since the DS was revived. Do we really need more of these competitions? Staff will just pick the same winners. After all, everyone is biased to some degree.

Finally, any sort of internal Tapastic competition is only going to draw more internal subscriptions. We've had this conversation already in the past with a heavily featured series and there comes a point when something on Tapastic has maxed out what it can do as far as internal marketing. At some point all the people on Tapastic are already going to know about your series and have subbed already or not. Winning a competition of any sort that is Tapastic only is unlikely to make a significant difference.

Which is where we suggest Tapastic creators try to external market their series instead. Go for competitions outside of Tapastic. Advertise outside of Tapastic. If everyone did this just a little Tapastic would grow as a whole and everyone would benefit.

At some point creators have to bring external subs to them rather than expecting Tapastic to provide all the subs internally.

If you wish to help external market Tapastic at your local convention scene or with another idea you may have, make sure to contact Josh (hello@tapasmedia.co) w/ Attn: Josh, External Growth. He is in charge of that and will likely appreciate the help.

[ChipGod]

Thats true, i see what your talking about. Thanks for the input!

[ChipGod]

Yes, and i see what the flaws are. Thanks!

[ChipGod]

Yeah, people do take this kind of thing hard. Thanks!

[punkarsenic]

hmmm.

in theory, id see this working through surveys posted to the forum to collect votes - and then, we could send off the data to the tapastic staff, showing 'hey this comic has won by us, could you reflect that some way in the site' to make it more useful. so like, then winners would be put in popular to staff picks (less likely) or spotlighted - it would give the site more democracy, without the staff having to make the move.

[ChipGod]

Yes! This is perfect! Itd add awards into it, and add more opinions into the browsing section!

[scythe]

I don't know why some are conflating the idea of holding awards and a contest or competition. Personally, I like the idea of healthy competition, but that's neither here nor there, because giving out awards, which I think should be annually for prestige value, is just a way of acknowledging excellence after the fact.

People could nominate comics to predetermined categories, which could then be judged by the staff.

It could just be a little thing you can put on your work, like 2016 Tapastic Gold Medal for Sci-Fi or something similar. Just some nice extra recognition for all your hard work.

I'd love to see it happen. It would give people something to strive for. A 'one day' goal to keep people motivated and to create some much-needed buzz.

[ChipGod]

Thats the goal in this, the thing im trying to achieve with this idea