Website updates and collecting feedback

SAME!! I've liked, disliked and then liked again several pages already. And likes influence a series stats so not nice

I have tested this and it seems that I only have this issue when I re-visit my own episodes. Maybe there is a new block for us to like own series that don’t work?
Just like here at the forum. You can’t like your own posts.

I think I know what you mean, about the heart looking gray or outlined. To be honest, I never noticed it until now because both options (gray and outlined) look like an unclicked heart to me, so I was re-clicking it and therefore unliking other people's comics. Shouldn't it turn red or something?

This. Also the fact that the bar with Prev/Next, Like and all that is constantly disappearing and you have to click to summon it just to press the Like button, for heaven's sake, why??
So if I won't click, I won't even know there is a Like button! Just to many things to do for a simple action =\

Well yeah, it is annoying enough that I should make a note to remind people to do all those things (because many people don't just do it), but now we send them on a quest to find how to do it

Considering this thread has fallen to the wayside (as in, it's not updating every 30 seconds like it was when it was first posted lmao) lemme just throw in some handy tagging so the notifications get bumped @michaelson @Yoon If you guys are still in the office or working from home amid the virus, let's get these bugs squished and features polished! <3

oh boi here comes a double post (and a LONG one at that, get out ur popcorn kids, it's an old man Uzuki novella rant) because it's nearly 4 am here and in my ADHD fueled insomniac rage i just discovered something

i am absolutely 100% going to regret making this post when i wake up tomorrow I'm just sorta blind with eureka rage rn lol

maybe y'all have already figured this out in which case, leave it to me to be the last horse to cross the finish line lmao

but like

y'all know how on our main comic pages, if we don't have multiple series, it'll show a Trending tab in whatever genre our comic is ? ( so if your solo comic is a Fantasy comic, it'll show Trending Fantasy, if Comedy it'll show Trending Comedy, etc.)

So at first I was like, hmm, it feels like it's doing a lot more harm than good to have it be a system where it's either "recommended series" OR "other series by this author". Because I find the majority of creators on here have at least 2 series, even if their second one is just like, a shitposting type comic or a gallery for their art, etc. or perhaps an old comic that they've left behind to explore new things.

And oh no. I'm vibrating with 'what if' conspiracy thoughts.

image.png700x525 420 KB

It will only show that trending list on a comic page you are now required to go to by default if you don't have multiple series. This much we already know, but I don't know if people realize just how much this could be potentially affecting traffic.

Because if y'all haven't noticed, 9 times out of 10 they tend to be comics that are already on the front flipping page, either free to read or Premium. And if they're not on the front page already, they ... tend to always be the same comics. Like every time I click on a comedy comic it always comes up with Sarah's Scribbles, Erma, Rock & Riot, Brutally Honest, etc. with one or two slots randomized out to some other comic that's equally as popular (ex. theodds1out, Fail by Error, etc.) Now, I've got nothing against these series, I have most of them in my reading list already (to the point that I suspected maybe it was based on reading list? But I'm not subscribed to Erma. So that helped rule that out).

And it seems that how fresh these comics are doesn't seem to matter either. Fail By Error hasn't been updated since October 2019, there haven't been any fresh comments left on the newest strip. But hell, I thought to myself, maybe if Min's updating 300 to 30, that's helping direct traffic to Fail By Error? She does have more than one series after all.

But then I realized it's been even LONGER since 300 to 30 updated. Since September 2019. No comments left since then. Even the first strip where you'd assume people would start from the beginning hasn't been commented on since November 2019.

Obviously I have no way of checking the actual traffic Fail By Error gets because I'm just going off update dates and comment engagement. That being said, Fail by Error's been on and off with its updating for some time (for good reason, Min is a very busy woman lol) and it seems its getting most of its traffic just from being in the Trending tab for Comedy series on just about every Comedy comic out there. It's usually on the Popular page as well, albeit further down, but... still. Still there. Which wouldn't make sense if that Trending tab is based on actual Trending results; and yet it does make sense if they're intentionally putting them on the Trending tab. It's like some paradoxical loop. But hey, Fail by Error was super popular when it regularly updated. Maybe it's getting reposted and meme'ed somewhere. Maybe Tapas posts their older strips to the Daily Feed every now and then, or maybe they have a little blurb on the app.

Rock & Riot is in the same boat though. It hasn't updated since 2017. To be fair, they have Project Nought as well, but it also hasn't updated since 2019 and it was basically a departure post as they got a book deal (like to publish physical copies) so we'll probably never see it free to read online again because they'll be trying to actually sell the physical books. Still, 2019 isn't that far away, and the same can be said about Min's currently quiet series that have both at least updated in the last 6 months.

And then I saw Treehouse in the series landing Trending tab.

Treehouse hasn't updated in five years and neither has the gag-alternative Branches, which is published by the same creator. In fact, the creator made an update post two years ago saying he was working on the next chapter of Treehouse, but a new full time job as a dad was keeping him busy (completely understandable lol). That was two years ago though, and Treehouse has, unfortunately, not updated. I really liked Treehouse so this makes me sad

BUT WHY THE FUCK IS IT IN THE TRENDING TAB /FURIOUSLY TAPS MONITOR SCREEN TAPAS EXPLAIN. YOU'RE RECOMMENDING COMICS TO PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT ONLY INCOMPLETE, BUT WILL LIKELY NEVER EVER EVER FINISH OR HAVE A CONSISTENT UPDATING SCHEDULE EVER AGAIN.

In the comic subpage, Popular and Trending seem to be the exact same thing btw lol like I see some variety, but to no surprise, it's usually the same comics dominating the top rows, just shuffled around in order a bit. I think this much we were already more than aware of though, the Comic section of the website when sorted by Popular/Trending is basically just the front page, but organized into one big list.

Y'know what was really fun btw? It was way more difficult than you'd think to find a Trending tab. Because most series I clicked on in the Comic browsing section were free to read, and surprise surprise, the MAJORITY of free to read creators have more than one series, so voila, lack of a trending tab. Over the years I've always found it to be like, a 75% chance that a creator has at least TWO series under their belt. Obviously that stat is pulled out of my ass, but it's not based on nothing, I just find it to be extremely common, and for good reason - doing multiple comics is easy to do when you're not being paid and on contract to focus on just one story, and for many of us, we enjoy dipping our toes into multiple genres. We also enjoy having a 'side comic' to do when we're feeling artist's block on our main series or just want to catch a break from it, even just for a few hours. Many story-focused creators have dipped into the realm of comedy strips, and vice versa (when I started here on Tapas it was gag strips and now I mainly do fantasy, with some gag strips here and there whenever I'm in the mood). Lots of plot-based creators also like to do little side gag-style mini strips that still use the characters and universe from their established longform series (I'm gonna mention it twice in this post btw, but Treehouse is a good example - Treehouse is the main series with a plot, and then there's Branches, which is a sort of little side series that's not as serious and more just for fun character exploration).

So when it comes to the lot of us trying to get into trending in some regards, you'd think the trending tab that's genre specific and right next to other relevant comics would help us out because your genre isn't being pitted up against a completely separate one. But it really doesn't, because it's always the same regurgitated shit, often times with comics that are no longer even showing a pulse, and that's assuming the Trending tab even shows up in the first place. So not only do you have to worry about competing with the comics that are practically automatically pinned to just about every genre-based Trending tab in addition to the front page and Trending vs. Popular categories, now you have to worry about even being seen on the free to read comics, regardless of their popularity, because if they happen to have more than one series, something that's completely out of anyone else's or the website's control, that Trending tab is gone. Kapoot. And even if there is a Trending tab... see above. Now you're gonna get recommended Sarah's Scribbles for the 7834978593th time.

Screw it, with Treehouse in the Trending tab, your alive and well comic that you've been consistently updating for lord knows how long is now up against a dead webcomic that hasn't updated in five freaking years.

Priorities???

And then there's Premium series. Believe it or not I have the least to say with these. More often than not there's usually a trending tab right on their page (as many - disclaimer, not ALL - Premium series are solo), and they're pretty much ALWAYS other Premium OR free to read BUT mainstream series that I just saw on the front page or on someone else's series landing trending tab. So there's a regurgitating cycle of traffic getting passed around like a fucking hot potato, from series that are already prioritized to be just about everywhere.

As people have been reporting dipping traffic since the update, and a now-obviously-messed-up front page with strange, out of wack priorities, I can't help but feel this is just another part of the website that was done intentionally to screw with us lol Call me crabby all you want but I'm legit not accepting "the algorithm does it" arguments anymore because of those dead series showing up and getting re-fed traffic that automatically puts them right back in the tab. I know Fail by Error and Rock & Riot are all popular and great comics, but that popular that they show up in trending no matter what every week, on every single comic that pertains to their genre? Are you guys posting their old strips in the daily feed or something??? If you come at me saying that it's NOT the algorithm then that just makes it worse because that means you're intentionally planting the same rotation of series in there.

Again, maybe y'all have already figured this out. But I'm hoping putting it into words so concise and in-depth it will help us all realize the actual gravity of this new system they've been slowly spoonfeeding us the last couple years (and then with the update they went too far and accidentally choked us with our own spoon lol). Especially for those who haven't actually thought about it or realized it yet.

The more I looked into it, the deeper the rabbithole went and the more I felt inclined to word vomit it here. As I'm sure many of you have assumed from the earlier post where I tagged the admins, I don't want the staff thinking we've just forgotten lmao (especially considering how silently they dealt with that Lost and Found S3 BS a few days ago, which they never actually commented on lol it was proooobably, i say in hopeless denial, just a bug). Because a lot of us are still experiencing the fallout from that frigging update, from faulty - some ripped away entirely - features, to creepy crawly bugs that are constantly breaking social distancing rules by being less than 6 feet away from our business at all times.

Tapas, give us all the Trending tab, and for god's sakes fix it so that it makes sense and isn't recommending us the same series on every page, alongside dead series just because they were household names at one point. That's not cool to the series that are now alive and well and could possibly become household names in their own right.

I'll say it again that I have nothing against the creators or their comics that show up in these tabs, many of them I have in my own reading list and enjoy reading when they update. This isn't a problem I have with the creators or their work, this is a problem I have with you, Tapas. I used to love this place, anyone who knows me well enough can attest to that, and now I'm just feeling sorely taken advantage of. I know many of the devs don't have actual control over what they can do because you have investors and the like who want to see things a certain way, with their money and your future as a company as the hostage negotiation. But this isn't Tapas. This isn't the website I fell in love with in high school all those years ago, with all my dreams and plans for the future just a mere twinkle in my eye. Is it not too much to expect more out of a website that we put our time and effort and work and passion into? (and for some bring heaping pounds of traffic into giving you guys free advertising and clout with our free labor /cough cough) Many of us chose you as our first and foremost exclusive platform. Many of us stuck with you for years (through so much bullshit, from the website creators and the community alike). Don't make me regret standing up for you guys when I did, through all that was high and low. This isn't where I wanted to see you guys when you were still budding and small and I know you have the capabilities to do better because that's what I believed when I first came here - and now that trust and hope is really being worn thin. Give me, and the lot of us, a reason to hold onto that hope and loyalty, to stand up for you guys when you make mistakes, and not regret it.

Thanks for coming to my 4 AM TED rant. Thanks for wasting like a good 2 hours of my life from scoping shit out and mad typing this post at 136 words/minute, Tapas.

I don't want to move.
I don't want to be mad.
I want us all to be a happy family.
I have always been proud of Tapas, the community and the site.
I wish to believe in the sweet talk coming from @michaelson

But I keep seeing another reality.
The trending is broke.
The overpromotion of dead popular series.
The redesign was rushed.
Premium creators complaining too. (Did they even get a warning?)
Support and Subscribing feature being hidden.

And speaking of Support.
This CRITICAL one newer got answered???

Remenber this one? The one that almost got the last Inksgiving in trouble.

"Know the tree by the fruit it bears"
Please Tapas. No more sweet talk.
Either you did a fail job or you did it on purpose!

I would love to stay here. All my content on my series is heavy influenced by my stay at Tapas.
I call myself a "Self-claimd Tapas Exclusive" because I want it to be like that.

I do not feel that I belong anywhere else. So please take good care of me.

I know this has been said already but hiding the subscribe button should be fixed. Please. It's hurting the series a lot.

I got over 500 views this month, the peak for my series, but only 7 new subscribers. Of course there are many reasons as to why people sub or not but I just have the feeling that the hidden button is a big part of this. If a person doesn't see the subscribe button right away, they're not going to start looking for it. They move on.
Please just change the button to a visible spot. Such a critical feature shouldn't have been hidden in the first place.

I'm also hoping that the whole team is safe and healthy!

lol IDK if it was aimed at that but my conspiracy post was not me trying to be deliberately inconsiderate of Tapas staff and their own goings-on.

Listen, guys, I understand that right now, the world is sort of on fire and the economy isn't in a stable place. People are losing their jobs, being required to work from home, or being made to go into work in dangerous conditions due to being 'essential'. People are stressed and have even more going on in their lives outside of work. I understand that Tapas staff has been working diligently since that update was made (and yes, it hasn't been that long since the update was made, and two of those weeks have been spent with worldwide lockdowns being made and the workforce being ground to a halt). The current COVID-19 crisis has certainly put a wrench in a lot of Tapas staff's plans, both related and unrelated to the office.

But as time goes on, things will be forgotten. Priorities will shift. And now's an important time to reflect and remind Tapas staff that just because the discussion isn't updating every 30 seconds, doesn't mean it's not a problem anymore. I've already seen a multitude of questions and concerns in here that have gone skipped over, even after being repeated, entire threads even where Tapas staff has left the thread to die with no response. It might not be their intention, but from a user's perspective, it looks like the equivalent of ghosting.

Again, I understand the coronavirus has slowed a lot of things down, and even without it the Tapas staff has a lot of moving parts and stuff going on.

But it's the lack of communication that's got me and many others beating our heads against walls. And when that communication does happen, it's basically up to a coin flip whether or not we see a corresponding action.

The point of my post was to highlight some major issues with the current ecosystem of Tapas and how it's been slowly but surely becoming a scrubbed down corporate version of the vibrant place it used to be. Because even if Tapas isn't going to make comments on the subject, either due to not being able to due to the current worldwide crisis OR as simply as not being able to because yes, there are certain things Michael and Yoon apparently "can't comment on", that doesn't mean we should just forget about it and put up with it.

Despite demand, banners haven't been brought back. Novel formatting tools are still as watered down as can be. Thumbnails beyond the series landing page are no longer visible. Tags aren't even visible on the comics anymore (I'm feeling really bad for Harry Bogosian rn, a lot of his storytelling in A BETTER PLACE was done with tags you could read and interpret and it made it a really cool ARG - 'Alternate Reality Game' - experience of sorts. And I know he's not the only person to do that.) The front page is constantly the same genre/series that rotate through the banners and Trending and Recommended sections, regardless of whether they're Premium or just 'mainstream' free to read comics (again, Sarah's Scribbles, Fail By Error, etc. all of which I still keep seeing on every Comedy genre comic landing page, regardless of how small fish that comic may be). The music player isn't available on the app.

Basically any kind of individual expression that added to the unique experiences of each comic on this website has been scrubbed down so clean that all you can see is bone. Maybe it's presumptuous, but from my perspective, it's very obvious that Tapas is trying to bundle us all together with the same styles, formatting, and expression so that they can make it easier to sell us as a whole to investors.

And I feel that if Tapas' can reserve the right to give bare bones customer service voice explanations to very reasonable and justified questions, then the community should reserve the right to make informed decisions about their future here and whether or not Tapas is a place where they can grow.

I just happen to be doing some of the informing here. You can say that it's based purely on emotion, but the fact of the matter is, I've been here since 2013/14. I'm not some newbie coming in with conspiracy theories or some asshole being an asshole for the sake of it, I've been here for six-going-on-seven years - and stuck by Tapas and all its decisions through a whole darn lot of it - and so as a result, I've seen a lot of shit, from both Tapas and the community, for better and for worse, that has continued to shape and reshape my perspective and opinions of the website, based on a solid history of repeated experiences with the platform. And I'm not the only one - the proof is also in the veteran artists who would have been here just as long, if not longer than me, who've already left as a result of Tapas' actions and behavior these past few years. Just as I have the right to either leave this website or ride it out hoping for better (which obviously includes a lot of demanding btw lol), so too does everyone else here, and you can't make that decision without being informed.

To be perfectly honest, the lot of you like to say that our opinions don't matter as much, because the forums are only made up of about 50-100 people. But on the flipside, Tapas should consider themselves lucky that the forums aren't more commonly used by the public at large. They think it's stressful when 50 of us are bumping the same chat for hours on end? Try thousands. Because I guarantee you we'd be seeing a lot more mixed opinions if the forums were more accessible or advertised. Why do you think we see less complaints about LINE Webtoons compared to Tapas? Because they don't have a forum. Anyone who makes complaints about LINE comes here, for god's sakes. Give people an outlet, and you'll see a lot more discussion unfolding.

The fact of the matter is, I have the right as a user who brings free to read content to the platform to disagree with Tapas' methods, as well as their responses to said methods when they're called into question, as much a right as all of you, because like many of you, we're providing a service to Tapas with the traffic we bring in, many new faces who may have never even HEARD of Tapas without our help, alongside the work we post so that the website can actually have comics to showcase to the public. Back in the day, before Premium was a thing, it was Prime, and those users were only different in the sense that they got Ad Revenue. Then Premium came along and Ad Revenue became accessible to everyone, which is great - but on the flipside, a lot of our work is now getting intentionally buried in a system designed to favor the mainstream and trendy, because it brings in the most money. But they would have potentially never gotten the seed money to expand their services to include Premium contracts if it wasn't for the massive library of comics and reputable creators we had here. Could you imagine Comic Fury trying to go for investment options? To be fair, it's run by one guy, but I'm p sure the only reputable comic I've seen on that platform is Keiiii's Heart of Keol. And I'm not entirely certain if they're still mirroring there.

Yes, Tapas is a company. They need to make money.

But it's the way they've gone about it that's entirely disingenuous. I would have no qualms with Premium series if we weren't being made to feel that it's Premium or nothing. I would have no issues with the ink system if it wasn't so questionable in its conversion process that has already raised many eyebrows. I would have no issues with a few buggy updates here and there, Facebook just updated yesterday and its app has been baloney since this morning.

But it's the lack of transparency and communication. The fact that every answer to each question is either a generic, soft-boiled customer-service-rep response, or a rigid "sorry we can't answer that question". So where are the people who can? Why are we seeing less and less from the PR side of Tapas as time goes on and why is it that we only see it when shit hits the fan? Why can't there be good news, either of the current goings-on or what's to come?

Tapas needs to re-prioritize what they really want for their platform as a website/app and as a brand. They absolutely need to find a PR specialist who can retrain them on how to engage with their community, because it's obvious after becoming so corporate these last few years that they've fallen out of practice.

And if they do re-prioritize and that idea of what they want Tapas to be is not something I'm comfortable with associating with? I'll definitely take advantage of the door. Honestly, depending on how staff responds to this, if they ever do (I understand that I'm not the most conventional person to have a discussion with lol) this is probably going to be the defining moment as to whether or not I continue to use this platform. I was fine with not getting rising statistics out of it (for any of you who've seen my recent thread regarding a personal sub count that's been practically locked in place for a record 4+ years, you know what I'm talking about lolol) but if I'm not getting joy out of it, that's when I draw the line.

And if you guys come to a similar decision, whether it be tomorrow, a month from now, or years from now, please don't ignore your freedom to do so.

That being said, we're also free to stand up and demand better because the majority of us make up this website as users who do Tapas a service of providing our work, in bulk, for free. Some may say that yes, they do a service by providing the platform ... but they're not the only platform out there. And unlike other platforms, Tapas seems to have made it their mission to give us less and less reason to continue posting here. At the moment, the giving/taking ratio is very skewed between the userbase and Tapas. I understand that Tapas wants to be able to provide options to creators to make a living off their work through things like the Ink Support System and Ad Revenue, which is supposed to separate them from other platforms like LINE, SmackJeeves, and ComicFury ... so why make it so hard for us to actually get visibility and hit those markers we need to hit to actually get paid out? I can't even remember the last time I was at the $25 benchmark required to pay out. It's been at least two years and I'm giving it a gracious estimate based off the top of my head, I'm fairly certain it's been far longer than that.

Don't form connections with corporations or let yourself be held down by some imaginary obligation to a relationship that doesn't exist. You can still cherish the memories that come with this place, but don't think for a second that you don't have a choice or that every decision you make is penultimate. Give yourself some credit for what you brought to the table, because if you hadn't, those memories wouldn't exist in the first place. Don't let Tapas take all the credit for them - if you hadn't made those memories here, not only would you not have noticed, but you would have made memories that were just as valuable - if not more so - elsewhere.

Explore your options. Do what's best for you and your work, because both you as an artist and your work, something only you could possibly create, deserves better.

And most importantly, be informed. Ask questions, and then ask them again and LOUDER when they aren't heard. Be patient for those answers when you have to be, but don't settle for ghosting or for plausible deniability (i.e. "we can't answer that question"). And for god's sakes, whatever decision you do make, please stick by it. Responses from staff are great, yes, because it's more than some companies will provide - but please, for the love of god and all that's holy, don't reward them for the bare minimum of responding, because that's all it's become at this point. That's like if your kid painted all over your walls, you yell at them, they respond "oh whoops i painted on the wall" and you go "OMG you're such an angel, i forgive you, don't worry about it!" I'm not saying don't ever move on from these issues or don't come to an understanding with Tapas, but don't forgive them just for responding. Forgive them when there's enough time for them to have taken action and stuck to those actions, including in their future decisions.

I mean jfc why do y'all think I'm so unapologetic towards Tapas at the moment, when years ago I would have stood up for them at every turn? Because after years of those mistakes stacking up, they've proven that they think rectifying issues they caused should be bare minimum for satisfaction. I don't want to just see them fix the issues they caused, I want to see them learn from them so that these issues don't happen again. And the fulcrum of their issues is sans communication, next to lack of transparency and honesty. The unannounced and buggy-to-hell/watered down/LINE Webtoon copypasta website updates and the lack of visibility towards smaller 'non mainstream' comics and the like are all just the tip of a much bigger iceberg.

Thank you, and I hope you're all safe and healthy in these times.