@michaelson please just put the Subscribe button and support button right next to that giant heart they have.
The user then can easily do all three at the end of each episode!
First of all, thanks @michaelson for putting in the time and effort to reply to a largely upset community, it's not easy being the face of the team in this situation. It's appreciated, however it's frustrating that it's even necessary.
I logged into Tapas yesterday and thought I'd accidentally typed webtoon instead. I've been on Tapas since 2014-ish, and I've been on webtoon almost as long because I HAD to, but when given the choice I came back to Tapas and its superior interface, navigation and user experience.
I'm just one of many creators here and I've been lucky to have enjoyed the benefits of posting work to Tapas up until now, choosing this place and its community as a home for my comics. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, and many have already reached out with specific concerns regarding this update that I agree with so I'll avoid repeating them.
Tapas has done a lot for the creative community, and has historically been more supportive than not. Which is why this 'revamp' is so bewildering to me...it feels rushed, shoe-horned and very unlike Tapas which has me thinking that the team no longer has the power to make the kind of executive decisions it used to. "Missed the mark" is absolutely accurate, it's shooting at a bullseye and hitting yourself.
Why wasn't this redesign contemplated in previous communications with users? (And not just a vague sentence in an email a scant week or so before). Why weren't there polls or surveys to gain insight into user needs? Why weren't the changes beta tested? The fact that the update was rolled out despite this, and that you're now having to scramble around fixing bugs and other critical issues just adds to the frustration.
It may not have been your intention to hurt us with this change, and it's expected to have the dip in activity product of technical issues, but you did hurt us. We certainly appreciate the explanations, the apologies and promises to make things right to the best of your ability, most places don't even care, but there has been a woeful lack of communication leading up to this point and now we all have to suffer the consequences.
If it ain't broken, fix it 'til it is
I know that on the internet it seems as a million years have passed since the site's update has gone live, but I would like to remind everyone that it has been barely 24 hours since the launch.
The dev team likely already worked overtime and focused on the most urgent issues first and found some quick solutions for some of the other problems. I don't expect things to stay as they are or feedback to be ignored. There is no magical wand that does these things instantly - Web design is hard work & time consuming.
The Tapas team can't, nor would I expect them to, simply stop sleeping and eating because of minor bugs that overall don't break the site. Changes do take time and some patience will be necessary on our end as users.
Or in other words, turning off my mom voice:
Jeez guys, give em a break XD
Can we get an update on when the novel bugs will be fixed? I posted an update yesterday to 40% fewer views than normal, and I have a different novel updating tonight. I don't want new readers to start at the beginning and have entire chunks of text missing, but I don't want to reschedule the update for my current followers either :\
Is there an ETA for novel fixes?
As much as I agree with you that I don’t want people to have to work over time- the clock started ticking when they launched this. It only takes five days for the world to end when the farmers stop farming and the planes stop flying.
The simple solution is to revert back till glitches are solved but they don’t want to do that, if you’d like to point us to someone above mike so we can give >them< hell for doing this to the tapas team. I’d be up for that.
So dramatic! well, I'm glad that my life doesn't depend on the Tapas website. Let's maybe not let them run our government
Same, that would be fun - although thinking about this, if they are willing to invest money and/or their livelihood into building a company for webcomics, which is everything but an easy industry to be in, nor one that makes you particularly rich, that means even the higher ups are likely just as nerdy as we are. So I guess I'll not give hell to anyone today.
All changes are with trouble. And yes we should give the dev a break. Because they are not in charge of what had hit us all.
But the issue is more ”why” and that question we can’t get a full answer at. And that strange ”why” had caused a downgrade in Tapas functions and navigations.
Why did we downgrade? With no to little warning and without no beta test. Tapas was good at communicating about Covers but missed out THIS?
WHY THE RUSH?