We don't have enough promotion threads

[DiegoPalacios]

Gotta say, promotion is not about quantity, but quality.

An excess of ads is spam after all.

@redfrombluelife is one of the most creative advertising stunts i've seen on this forum, and is entertaining in itself, which makes people want to watch him and your work.

[ryoko]

I'm wondering if some of the visibility has been lost because of all the spam comics that are advertising game hacks keep popping up. I report at least 1-2 of them every other day when I'm scrolling through the fresh/free-to-read section on the desktop/mobile version. Maybe Tapas had to change something in the site's code to try and counter these fake comics to prevent them from popping up on the app. And then this counter measure has inadvertently caused series with under a certain number of subs to also not appear on the app?

[Rhonder]

Preventing spam is the likely cause for the app sub threshold, but it still raises the following questions for me:

• I wonder why they're only hidden from the app's fresh section and not the websites? Logically if new series were hidden on both they would have practically no way to gain traction but it's still curious.

• I wonder why it is that a larger platform like Webtoons can afford to not have such a restriction in place then? That may very well just come down to them having more staff to catch problematic content, or maybe more users who consistently report it (thus making it easier to find)?

Either way wish it wasn't in place so newbies had a little better shot at finding their audience I was lucky and managed to pass the threshold with both of my series relatively quickly via forum networking (the first time) and having a previous readership/other social media networking (this time), but Tapas is small enough a platform that getting over 15 can be hard without outside marketing if you're also not getting your chances on Fresh Obviously a lot of creators know that outside marketing and networking is a good idea anyways (hence all of the promotion threads, per this thread's topic), but as this threshold isn't detailed anywhere on the website I would imagine a lot of creators are left scratching their heads as to why it's so hard to grow beyond like 5 or 10 subs lol

[skicoak]

While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forums.

For my part, the wide majority of the animosity I partook in, or witnessed, was because of the outdated advice that was repeatedly being offered my first few years here. It didn't reflect any of the changing situations at Tapas at the time...or now.

Being told, over and over, that being active on the forums, doing jam comics, and such was the key to success was no longer working then and it isn't working now. Even the shrinking front page space we're fighting for now isn't as effective as it was a few years ago. These are modern problems for small level creators...and we're not finding modern solutions.

[DiegoPalacios]

I think this happens because these creators shared what worked for them, which may not always be viable because of the changes in the industry. Some of these creators that reached the top "the old way", may not know the new way, or that the way changed at all......

[skicoak]

I think this happens because these creators shared what worked for them, which may not always be viable because of the changes in the industry. Some of these creators that reached the top "the old way", may not know the new way, or that the way changed at all......

Which was the basis of most of the strife. An insistence that what worked for them should still work for everyone just wasn't practical.

And remember there was also a tangent of folks that didn't believe being promoted on the front page regularly was a factor in their sub-counts.

It didn't matter how often it was articulated that the commentary wasn't on the quality or effort of those creators that reached those levels...it was about the changing system/environment.

Just saying.

[carloswebcomic]

It should be said that a lot of premium series are made by creators who used to be regular old working-for-free members. While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forums.

But in the end, it is Tapas that created this situation by removing the one visibility opportunity for smaller comics.

I don't think that people are blaming the premium comics. People are just looking for a chance to get their work out there snd Tapas has been making this harder and harder.

[joannekwan]

But in the end, it is Tapas that created this situation by removing the one visibility opportunity for smaller comics.

I don't think it's that simple though. Even if premium series (the imports and home-grown ones) were separated into their own home page, the community comics would still be populated with algorithmically picked popular and trending titles, ones that often stay perpetually so because the audience votes with their views and interactions. These series are most likely popular elsewhere and bring those numbers in to propel them to the top of Tapas' charts. And staff-picked community creations would still have to meet certain standards, good grammar, art, legibility, episode minimum, nothing outstandingly graphic, etc. People would still be asking for more categories to add, which due to Tapas' staff size would require an immense undertaking.

I talked about this a bit more a year ago (before I became a mod) in this thread when Tapas had their site redesign. Some things have changed certainly, as the context of my old post was a little different, but many things still apply.

So it's a matter of contention seen time and time again brought up on the forums, particularly whenever Tapas rolls around a new update. As a creator that's been using Tapas/Tapastic since 2015, I've seen a LOT of changes. Though I will admit I wasn't around from its wee years when it was just starting, I've still experienced very much of its growth from the launch of its app, to starting the novels section, to acquiring international titles and offering premium content, to the support progra…

[carloswebcomic]

I don't think it's that simple though. Even if premium series (the imports and home-grown ones) were separated into their own home page, the community comics would still be populated with algorithmically picked popular and trending titles, ones that often stay perpetually so because the audience votes with their views and interactions. These series are most likely popular elsewhere and bring those numbers in to propel them to the top of Tapas' charts. And staff-picked community creations would still have to meet certain standards, good grammar, art, legibility, episode minimum, nothing outstandingly graphic, etc. People would still be asking for more categories to add, which due to Tapas' staff size would require an immense undertaking.

Well, I think thst issue here is not one of staff picks and features.

Remember how newly updated pages would show at the bottom of the front page?
That was enough to get eyes on comics.

People could pick up readers on its own merits, not at the whim of an algorythm or if they caught the attention of staff.

It didn't take much real estate and it's not rocket science to implement. It's a simple "These are the latest updated comics".

But that's gone.
Why is that? Why did Tapas remove the one reliable method of visibility?
Was it really that much work to implement amd maintain?

At best, it seems like a strange oversight. At worst, it just feels mean spirited.

That feature has a massive impact. For many, It truly means the difference between building an audience and total obscurity.

[joannekwan]

The little Fresh section on the homepage, as far as I know, was part of a rotating collection of categories like staff picks and community comics. I don't know if staff plans on putting it back in or are holding off because of the prevalence of spam comics and are working to better weed those out. But every so often the homepage does change and categories are switched up in display and placement. Tapas tracks the numbers and, I would assume, tune future layouts accordingly.

[carloswebcomic]

The little Fresh section on the homepage, as far as I know, was part of a rotating collection of categories like staff picks and community comics. I don't know if staff plans on putting it back in or are holding off because of the prevalence of spam comics and are working to better weed those out. But every so often the homepage does change and categories are switched up in display and placement. Tapas tracks the numbers and, I would assume, tune future layouts accordingly.

Well, we used to have a newly updated section. If there was a problem with spam comics, that's easily solved by putting a limit of one instance per day.
That section is gone and now we have the problem of visibility.
It does sound like Tapas has no inclination to do anything about it.

It's such a simple thing with the simplest of algorithms.
Webtoon has it. If it was truly a problem, other hosts would've removed it.
This is such a shame.

[joannekwan]

Newly Updated could very well be in the rotation. I'm not full staff so I don't know and I don't check the homepage every week to check.

I mean right now they have New From the Community so I really don't see any deliberate erasure of free community endeavors.

[Eyre]

I've known one or two premium creators, and one thing they all have in common besides being really really lovely is that they all worked super hard on publicity at one point or another. But, [anecdotal evidence] I've known people to put in several times the same effort on products of equal value and achieved a fraction of their success, and that upsets me.

No one can say conclusively that "hard work" works, because no data exists on the people for whom it didn't.

...

I anticipated this point:

the community comics would still be populated with algorithmically picked popular and trending titles, ones that often stay perpetually so because the audience votes with their views and interactions.

here:

Perhaps what we want to see is for Tapas to champion comics that are, numerically speaking "underrated". It would not be a complex feat of statistics to return a list of comics that passed a certain threshold for 'consistency', taking into account length of episodes, and the regularity of updates [and activity level of creators, in order to determine which creators are active and invested in their contribution to the platform] [...] It would not be complex to query those highly consistent comics and return ones with very low/slow growth/popularity.

...just to elaborate a bit, I'm basically suggesting that next to 'Popular', 'Binge', 'Fresh' etc - not even on the front page - an additional tab exists listing comics sorted according to the algorithm I just described, which would only be populated by comics that are clearly putting in a lot of work, but are not getting recognised. An 'Undiscovered' tab.

Would this end up with "Sanic" levels of content as you implied in the post you linked?
Honestly, I don't believe it would. I don't think the shitposters of Tapas put in that much effort relative to the folks who really deserve to be seen, but aren't being.
I get that there are massive massive issues with effectively trying to quantify 'effort' based on someone's update schedule. But, I believe the benefits of this solution would outweigh that:

• At its heart, a high ranking under an 'Undiscovered' tab would be something creators could achieve that did not rely on the 'luck' of attention-seeking. Literally every means of gaining audience relies to some extent on luck. Just one place where this wasn't the case, even if it were hidden away, would be such an improvement.

• If nothing else, the tab would show different comics, that would not be easy to find anywhere other than 'Fresh'.

• The very nature of an 'Undiscovered' tab would have it that the things at the top probably wouldn't stay there very long as they attracted attention.

• Because of this, it wouldn't be a substitute for hard work publicising, it would just be "another chance". I get the impression that all some folks want is "just another chance", and that just having that might lessen the need they feel to promote their work in places some folks would rather they didn't.

• It wouldn't even have to appear on the front page. [anecdotal evidence] People who want 'undiscovered' things are happy to take a few clicks to find them if they know that it can be done. Compare this with my recent exercise writing music as gifts for creators on Tapas for a year where I had to scroll through Fresh for hours on end every time I wanted to find a new comic.

• The very existence of an 'Undiscovered' tab would address this kind of sentiment:

  That section is gone and now we have the problem of visibility.It does sound like Tapas has no inclination to do anything about it.

[carloswebcomic]

Newly Updated could very well be in the rotation. I'm not full staff so I don't know and I don't check the homepage every week to check.

But those are new comics, not newly updated.
They also look hand picked. I very much doubt that the latest 18 comics to have started all have professional quality art.
What happens once they are no longer visible there?

That still doesn't solve the problem of visibility.

I mean right now they have New From the Community so I really don't see any deliberate erasure of free community endeavors.

What I see is that Tapas is trying to hide comics it doesn't deem to be up to standard.
It is picking and choosing who gets some visibility while hiding the rest as some embarrassing secret.

What's needed is an impartial way to provide visibility to ALL comics, and Tapas has removed that.

[joannekwan]

The issue with Fresh is that certain comics can pop up that could get Tapas in trouble if the right set of eyes sees it on the app, since app store rules. Yes, Fresh is unfiltered, anything can show up. Not just mature content that may slip by, but fancomics too. Like browsing fresh right now, I found these two.

That's why the front page is largely curated aside from Popular and Trending, anything featured needs to adhere to certain standards or else Tapas can get in trouble with the app stores, have the app stripped, and will end up stripping visibility from everyone in the end.

[carloswebcomic]

The issue with Fresh is that certain comics can pop up that could get Tapas in trouble if the right set of eyes sees it on the app, since app store rules. Yes, Fresh is unfiltered, anything can show up. Not just mature content that may slip by, but fancomics too. Like browsing fresh right now, I found these two.

Yup, just as I thought XD

This is what happens when comic hosts get too corporate and business like.
I guess creativity has to abide by business rules.

Sounds like we're stuck with the problem then, because as long as the content is filtered, there will always be people who are not going to get a fair go.

I'm going to put on my prediction hat and say we're going to see a movement of underground comics a la 1970's.

[Eyre]

An 'Undiscovered' rating would not have this issue.
I'm no statistician, so feel free to call me out on this... but:
In order to calculate a series' consistency, the metric would need to take into account the rate of change of the average length of time between updates. In order to calculate a statistically useful average (let alone rate of change of the average), a comic would need to have some form of consistency for a significant length of time. As a result, a series' consistency rating would change slowly. So, new series would rise to the top of the tab very slowly, making it very easy to human-moderate them.

Additionally, can Tapas not just require users to declare a comic as a fan comic upon creating their series, so that ads can be prevented from displaying alongside them? I used to help moderate an old writing platform that implemented that change in that vein while I was there - it seemed to convince several grumpy copyright-demons to back off.

[arxianfall]

Use these sites for what they really are. A curated UI that saves you some temporary hassle.

[joannekwan]

Additionally, can Tapas not just require users to declare a comic as a fan comic upon creating their series

A suggestion like this was brought up before, but the hurdle was that people could just not check a box that their work was a fanwork and lie. And it would be a hassle and turn-off for creators who want to post a new series but have to wait for their submission to be manually reviewed. I doubt Tapas has the people-power to review every new series that's created on a daily basis.

It just takes one series to be spotted for the app store to bring down their hammer. It was a single series that showed a bit of public hair that was reported on the app which brought about the massive audit of all of Tapas' content that led to stricter mature guidelines.

I can't speak on your Undiscovered idea, since I've no experience in coding and making algorithms, so I don't know how feasible it is to even begin tackling something like that at this time for the Tapas team.

[carloswebcomic]

A suggestion like this was brought up before, but the hurdle was that people could just not check a box that their work was a fanwork and lie. And it would be a hassle and turn-off for creators who want to post a new series but have to wait for their submission to be manually reviewed. I doubt Tapas has the people-power to review every new series that's created on a daily basis.

That makes sense.

I wish that Tapas was more upfront and transparent with its decisions.
It does seem that they rather avoid the issue rather than being honest as to why they are doing things.
It's probably one of the reasons why my view of this platform has soured over the years.
They really seem to have an issue with just being open and honest.