No. Hiss. Bad.
lol
Margottoro was not directly referring to you or anyone else. They were not implying you don't work hard. It was a valid suggestion, that, according to Michael, has been made a lot:
Fact of the matter is, it's the popular comics that draw traffic into this site. Hell, I never would have found Tapastic (at least not as soon as I did) if it hadn't been for GamerCat outsourcing its views to its mirror here on Tapas. And I'm sure the people that draw those comics that happen to be popular miss seeing the Popular section at the top, just like how we miss seeing Fresh or Trending at the top.
This is about finding a balance that works, not making it a "Popular vs. unpopular" issue, because that's just a fight none of us are gonna win (and frankly I don't want to see us start). We all gotta compromise 
Right, so what I mean by not a direct answer, I mean to say that she asked "Who was affected", and your response was "the staff at no point enforced... the clause to interfere with any creators". That doesn't tell me who would have been affected, it told me you didn't enforce anything. That's what I mean by "not answering it". Like, yeah I get what you're trying to say but the question "who?" was not answered. We still don't know who, exactly, was affected by the clause. Because the answer to that isn't "nobody", of course the clause affects someone, or else it wouldn't have been written and implemented in the ToS, which outlines the relations between user and owner, right?
The second question was basically "are we talking 3rd party? Self-publish? Merch?" and your response was "distribution of merch, printing, etc.", which doesn't define whether we're talking about one and/or all of the mentioned venues. But here, actually, you do answer that, so that clears that up, doesn't it? =P Thank you for that. It's just that the details were requested and the response didn't exactly define those details. Not a big deal, hahaha.
I mean...
From the sounds of it, it sounds like their plan of action was as follows:
Outline the clause in the ToS. Not to scare us, but because they're legally required to.
Start reaching out to creators about offering financial help through competitive offers and partners that would help them find paid work THROUGH their work.
The first line I bolded is exactly what you're looking for - they didn't enforce the clause on anyone, so no creators were affected by this.
The second bolded line is what their intentions were. It's not like the whole dynamic of the website and our "rights" as users changed when they added that clause. Hell, we went two weeks without noticing it and literally nothing happened. Series were deleted during this time (I can only assume because new series are added and deleted every day), people tried the site and left, and nothing happened as a result of this clause. They had to add that clause because they're legally bound to add that clause. I highly doubt people would rather it not be outlined and just be done on a whim without anyone being notified. The update to the ToS was the notification of that. Meanwhile, people are behaving like the moment this clause was added, all their rights as a user was taken away, their mother was kidnapped, and their town was burned to the ground. Literally nothing happened in those two weeks to suggest our rights were actively being taken away.
What bothers me most about this whole ordeal is a lot of the creators leaving seem to have only based their decision on the shitstorm on twitter without coming to this forum first to see what's up, or waiting for news from the staff, or you know, actually e-mailing Tap about their concerns.
Agreed. My notification feed has been flooded with wall posts from creators who are either a.) leaving, or b.) staying, but reluctantly staying (while also posting links to their other mirror sites at the same time). The real shitty part is that most of these creators are doing wall posts only, so the large population of app users aren't being notified and are basically just being left to scratch their heads when their favorite creators/series are suddenly wiped off the site. They aren't being properly warned, which, ironically, a lot of these creators are demanding Tapas to do every time they update their ToS terms.
I don't think you understand the point of what was being asked. Nobody is concerned whether or not you could delete your comic under the clause, the clause literally included the fact that you are free to delete your content from the site if you don't agree. No one is confused about this, there is no need for clarification.
And, as I had already stated, it's not about who wasn't affected, it's about who was. You don't put in a clause in Terms of Service if it doesn't apply to anyone, that... literally means nothing. That'd be a meaningless and powerless clause. Of course it included someone, we want to know who exactly. That question still hasn't been answered: WHO. Still yet, no one is confused about their intentions, or rather their stated intentions. It has been clarified time and time again and it doesn't answer the actual question asked, but Michael did answer the question in his last post in response to me, so that's not even relevant now.
If you're still confused about what I was saying in regards to answering the actual question, please refer to the original post:
To clarify once and for all, the purpose of the questions is to define that which was broad and vague in the actual clause that everyone understands is no longer in effect. No one is assuming that their IP's were stolen, the concern is the precise function of the clause, which has yet to have been made perfectly, crystal clear. Now, they did say they were working on a public announcement regarding this, so actually I think these questions were asked FOR that announcement. It's not wrong for Michael to have attempted to answer them prior to the official announcement but I was simply saying that I don't think his answers are actual answers to the questions. It's like if @Devika asked a yes or no question and Michael answered with "I'm pretty sure the answer is maybe." That's not yes or no, it doesn't help clarify anything.
Now, that all being said, regarding the more important question - question #4- Michael already stated that he'd be requesting a team member more familiar with "legalese" to properly answer the question, so I think from this we'd likely get the direct answer for question #1 that's being sought. So I don't think any further attempts to answer are necessary from anyone who isn't employed by Tapas and qualified to answer the question.
Again, this isn't a big deal, no one's losing their heads. There are simply some of us who want to know exactly what the nature of the clause was. Everything's cool, no one's panicking. I mean, I'm not. And I don't think @Devika is either. Everything is groovy.
And, for anyone confused why there is a perceived dissonance in regards to intentions and actual wording, look up the term "Right of First Refusal". A quick google search should explain it well enough
Apply does not always equal affected. Those words do not mean the same thing.
FOR EXAMPLE, here is an excerpt from Instagram's ToS:
We reserve the right to refuse access to the Service to anyone for any reason at any time.
Does that apply to everybody? Yes. Does this automatically happen to everybody? No. That's the difference between "apply" and "affect" in this case.
Tapas' ToS applies to everybody. But not necessarily everybody - if anyone at all - was affected by it. And we won't know if anyone was affected by it unless someone actually steps forward and claims it. So far, no one has. Were you actually, directly affected by this, @NagashiKhan? Outside of a moral standpoint and a "what if" thought process?
Additionally, a lot of these clauses are necessary for legal reasons. Businesses have their own legal representatives for this very reason - so they don't absentmindedly do something that might be considered illegal. Omitting or lying by omission could be classified as one of those things, so online digital services like Facebook, Tapas, Instagram, etc. are legally obligated to mention these things even if they don't affect everybody 100% of the time.
Apologies if I'm still not understanding the question.
Okay, but maybe that's as clear as they can be with us right now. Considering Michael even said:
So we either have to wait for someone who's qualified to speak further on the matter, or just accept the fact that companies can't exactly be 100% transparent all the time. So far, the explanations given so far have been reasonable, even if it's not what you were looking for down to the very last detail. At the very least, have some patience.
Googling legal terms is the same as googling health issues - they don't apply the same way to every single condition. We don't know what kind of legal setup they have with Tapas. Don't assume cancer just because you googled "mole on my butt." It's probably just a mole on your butt If you're really concerned, go see an actual professional (in the case of the hypothetical hyperbole, wait for a qualified staff member to come here and tell us more and/or make an actual official announcement).
Again, sorry if the point of the question is just flying over my head. At this point, why should it matter who was "affected"? No one's stepped forward making such claims, and the clause is gone now, so any chances of anyone being affected are now gone.
Wow, the stuff going down while I'm sleeping! Thank you to everyone for looking at my questions, it feels good that they're being addressed, one way or the other. And @NagashiKhan is right, I was going for the nitty-gritty details, because we have so many different interpretations floating around but no official, clarifying word, and because if something like this does end up in court, looking at the details of what's written is exactly what the lawyers and judges will do.
Right now, I agree with both @NagashiKhan and @UzukiCheverie that there is little point in further discussing it until the person in charge of legal stuff at tapas makes a statement.
Hehe nope, I'm not! And yep, I'm all about the details. ;D
Thank you!
Honestly I'm worried about people still jumping ship due to the twitter storm and how in the long run thats going to affect the site --- the whole thing is quickly becoming more stressful as people perpetuate falsities on twitter and many take it for truth then jump ship taking this whole thing as battle cry for artists rights and being screwed over by the "cooperate man" ---I know I'm not a very popular or big creator on Tap but I love making my comics and this whole thing just worries me as others have gradually been getting meaner about the whole ordeal.
Artists in general are a salty people.
But I'd think the whole thing will blow over with time. Like I didn't even know Comic Panda lifted series without creator approval until a couple days ago.
If people think they can still retain and/or grow their audience outside of Tapas, then that's their business.
It's up to the people who stay with Tap to keep it as one of the better webcomic hosting platforms and make it better for everyone.
Going to try to look at the silver lining:
Staff mentioned somewhere in a recent post that they are looking at hiring a community manager. In order words a full time Forum, Tweeting, Facebook, podcasting staffer for creators to liaison with. That's a good thing that probably wouldn't have happened until a major "blow out" like this occurred.
They should hire this employee:
Ok, so a little corny but it's the first thing that came to mind and it gets the point across.
Tapas is like a toddler still, learning how to walk. It took a big step and went boom. That's just going to happen from time to time. The sad thing is that creators didn't even give the staff 24 hours to respond when the poo hit the fan. On the other hand, staff should have addressed this weeks ago when it was called into question, instead of waiting for the storm to form.
They also spread falsities and out of context trash about specific members.
They also group attacked any member that requested for people to give staff those 24 hours and trash talked them on other places. Not all of it is visible here of course since the mods have done and are doing what they can to prevent it, but I have heard from silent watchers of this drama that there's a lot of gossip going on behind people's backs.
I'm mostly avoiding this discussion right now for a certain reason, but I thought I would add this. Going back to lurking in the corner.
I'm deleting my post since it was flagged as spam :/ I didn't consider it as much since I was responding to a literal ad video, but if it's bothering people that's all that matters.
Only today three of the comics that I read have deleted their comics or have announced they are leaving. Please don't act as if this problem is solved.
Suggestion: give again more attention on the home-page to the free and unknown comics that made your site great.
Y'know...with all the creators (some of them big) who emotionally overreacted to this weekends shit storm completely jumping ship before they gave Tapas an opportunity to explain themselves, (or not because I guess stirring up your own shit storm on Twitter is better than having a logical discussion with other creators) it'll be their loss and our gain for those who've chosen to stay with Tapastic.
And no...that does not make us "dick suckers" according to SOME creators over on Twitter. (My god did this weekend show lots of creators true colors.)
Honestly yeah, especially since the whole Comic Panda thing was brought up by one of the Big Names in webcomics. Like it sucks that that had happened to them, but they brought it up for the sole purpose of fear-mongering without even bothering to check if the original staff of Comic Panda were even still around. Michael already confirmed that the staffers who were around at that time were no longer with tapas, so its not like tapas was trying to sweep troublesome history under the rug when the current staff had nothing to do with it
it sucks that people become openly hostile towards those who don't think tapas is out for our blood :/ but theyre the ones screwing themselves over because tapas is probably the only other active and big webcomic hosting site asides from webtoons.