Thoughts on the new Webtoon Contest?

craftymarten 2018-09-21 11:57:40 UTC #657

Congrats to Raining Knives! Been reading it on Tapas (I found it through Comic Fury or smack Jeeves I think) for a few months after totally binging the archive and it's so good, I'm glad it's getting a lot of recognition now. I should check the others out at some point too.

bear1 2018-09-21 12:14:19 UTC #658

@craftymarten
That was my exact thought, wohoo, ‘raining knives’ made it
That comic is so great and has such a nice story and awesome artwork. I’m really happy seeing it getting noticed for all their efforts

Also congrats to the other winners. I think it’s great that some smaller creators won so far. It’s difficult to make a splash in the webcomics world and getting recognized is a huge achievement.

turtledance24 2018-09-21 14:34:01 UTC #659

Was a good experience for me too...

turtledance24 2018-09-21 14:35:54 UTC #660

oh come on, the rules are vague as F too... Like, they say they are looking for most epic , man, how could an epic story be judged with just 4 chapters and the other one with having just 5.... Im pretty salty with the results but still this contest was a fuel for me to go forward.

beta1042 2018-09-21 14:37:31 UTC #661

Well I'm not saying I condone everything people are saying here, but I certainly understand why they are making speculations and why they are upset. And I think it doesn't benefit Webtoon as a company to ignore the underlying fact that their communication could seriously improve.

You make a contest, typically you want people to create entries that cater to your guidelines and specifications. Why make those intentionally misleading or unclear? If you wanted to make a contest where you'd judge purely on what you wanted- or you'd pick entries that could be perceived that way, then don't publish the breakdown of HOW you're going to judge.

turtledance24 2018-09-21 14:41:29 UTC #662

gotta agree with some of your points there man... like the fantasy entries that won has just 5 chapters in total, one only has 4.... how were they able to weigh those entries with just 4 chapters and 5 chapters? Can these individuals carry out a weekly series? I find those works to be good but still, they arent really authors that can run a regular series and the number of entries that they submitted was too short to be even judged as a good story.

But meh, nothing we can do... its a good experience for me. I learned a lot from this. Thanks to the contest...

fattackycats 2018-09-21 15:56:37 UTC #663

I think it's good we are having this conversation and expressing our opinions. I believe we should talk about things like this and communicate and share our thoughts because it's friggin tough out there as a creative person trying to make it.

Information is so hard to come by, especially from people in the industry. It's like youre always on the outside looking in, trying to figure out how things work but no one throws you a bone. I feel like LW could work on communicating a lot more and better, too.

Haku 2018-09-21 17:24:22 UTC #664

@Akiocha @theyaoiarmy
Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!

Kittosaurus 2018-09-21 17:50:31 UTC #665

I was glad to see that there was a good variety of not only underdogs but also some of the speculated front runners. I know I was struggling for a bit, because I was finding it hard to build an audience base, but I am happy that I competed. I have always put my comics aside and never been brave enough to commit and just go for it. So this was a great opportunity for me even though I didn't place.

Comics are soo subjective that no matter who they chose a lot of people were going to be angry. I like that there were comics of different styles and artistic levels. I wish all the best to the finalist! And I hope that those who didn't place will still keep creating - just do it for yourself. Everyone's journey is different!

fever 2018-09-21 18:34:32 UTC #666

I think it's not because "certain people" hate webtoon, therefore they blame webtoon regardless of the outcome. But because they are frustrated how webtoon managed to do things in the past that's clearly/atleast looked shady from their perspective. Honestly this result is not that so surprising for me but yeah a bit unexpected that ph doesn't even got in the final 8. There're reasons people would think ph would have gotten into the finals, because the unclear/misleading audience engagement thing, it's completely overwhelming contest so i think it's normal when some people or contestants were feeling discouraged at the time of the contest. And some people just haD the capacity to let loose and enjoying the contest while some people were desperate trying to win due to financial reasons or something else. It's all valid imho. Just because the results are a bit unexpected doesn't mean their hardwork and complaints at the time of the contest which based on atleast credible reasons/proofs are invalid. Anyway congratulations to all the winners :"")

AllisonGal 2018-09-21 20:01:29 UTC #667

Some seem to believe that if someone has 20 subscribers and 20 likes, his popularity is bigger than ones who has 200k and 20,000 likes because the ratio would prove that. I find this very ridiculous. if anyone wants to see who's got the bigger popularity it's simple, just go to discover and sort by popularity. How can comics from page 10 and beyond beat one in page 1? the only way they won is if PH having received 40% popularity has received 0 points for the 60% for strong character/strong plot/readability, and the 2 winners received the full 60%. Frankly, Their result is as foolish as if this contest was done with featured comics and they said Yumi cells beat I love yoo in terms of popularity and plotline, even with I love yoo having such massively big numbers.

Kittosaurus 2018-09-21 20:50:01 UTC #668

Popularity and audience participation are not synonymous, and I think that is where you are getting confused.

If Creator A has 200k views with 20,000 likes that works out to about 10 % participation (excluding comments and rating to simplify for this comparison). Verses Creator B with only 2000 views but 500 likes which would be 25 % participation. Obviously Creator A has more views but... they have a lower audience participation percentage.

This is where everyone is speculating on what webtoons took into account for this portion of the scoring. The percentage of audience participation would be a fairer way to judge the entries, so I like to think this is how they scored the contest.

fever 2018-09-21 21:11:29 UTC #669

While i do feel really bad for people who were discouraged because of the audience engagement point and didn't enter/continue their entries, i also feel bad for PH and its creators and fans just because you know, it seemed certain that they'd win, and from the looks of it they thought they'd win too and they even made an ost. I'm not even a fan. It's just, wow the anger on the ph's comment section.

Daknight 2018-09-21 21:24:29 UTC #670

I am just sad for many creators and more so when you see then uploading notice about the contest. I hope not everyome decides to drop their comic cause they did join the top 8.

OneHappyDay 2018-09-21 21:33:03 UTC #671

All right then let's say I started a comic yesterday and only got 10 views in my dashboard, I have 10 likes which (according to you) makes my audience participation to be 100%. that would mean my popularity is higher than PH and everyone in discover, then please explain to me why those popular comics in page 1 are in the lead in page 1 and I"m in page 100. Based on your human calculation I should be stronger in terms of popularity and audience engagement and on the very top, but why in their algorythm when sort by popularity, I'm in page 100? Please explain to me cause looks like that thinking of yours make no sense.

Kittosaurus 2018-09-21 21:44:27 UTC #672

@OneHappyDay you are misunderstanding me. The point I was trying to make is that popularity and audience participation are not the same thing.

Most people when they are referring to popularity they are only referring to only the views. So yes 200k views would be more popular then 2k views.

Audience participation refers to how active your audience is. Which was the point I was making with the Creator A and Creator B example.

So you could have a very popular webcomic with very low audience participation. You could also have a new comic that would be considered "unpopular" when simply looking at just the views but has a very engaged/ active audience.

This is why I hope they took audience participation into account when judging.

potootie 2018-09-21 22:29:17 UTC #673

First of all, LW has never come out and said that's the way audience engagement was calculated. You seem to be making assumptions, here.

Second, I believe the point that OneHappyDay was trying to make is, is that a logical way to estimate a comic's success? Obviously not. A comic with, as One said, 10 views and 10 likes would have a 100% score – that doesn't mean that the comic is a good fit for the Webtoon audience, and that doesn't mean that it should be viewed as 'above' a comic with a higher subscription count.

A series with 200k subs obviously isn't going to get 200k likes per chapter. A comic with 25 subs may, however, get 25 likes per chapter. Yes, those ratios can be mathematically found, but they mean nothing: they neither determine a comic's success nor accurately estimate an audience's interest.

potootie 2018-09-21 22:40:21 UTC #674

I am not going to argue on whether PH should have or should not have won the contest, because that's extremely subjective. It's true that the numbers (subs/likes) suggested that PH would have been a successful series had LW invested in it. (But then again, LW pretty much promoted the comic for the entire contest duration. The creator was also already fairly popular before starting, so all that popularity didn't come from nowhere).

But don't you think it's a little self-righteous for the PH fans to assume the comic would win even before the contest ended? Don't you think it's a little close-minded for the fans to ignore all of the other 6800+ other entries and state with such certainty that PH would have to / deserved to get the grand prize? I understand people are upset a comic they liked didn't win. But the anger and general righteousness I've seen in the comment section seems a little uncalled for.

Just – I wouldn't feel bad for the fans, if I were you.

Kittosaurus 2018-09-21 22:41:37 UTC #675

Exactly no-one knows exactly how Webtoons calculated the audience engagement portion. I never claimed that I knew how they were calculating it either. I simply said that I hoped they took audience participation into account. Yes I think the view count should be taken into consideration as well, but not be the only factor.

I don't think there is a perfect system. I agree that there would be some disproportionate scoring when looking at comics with a low view count.

fever 2018-09-21 22:46:16 UTC #676

No i just meant that i feel bad because they seemed to have similar understanding as i was/most people about the audience engagement, that popular entries surely have better chance at winning since it's up to 40%. I feel bad because of that misunderstanding, and only for that misunderstanding. Not because they should win or something. Yeah, that's what i meant.