Website updates and collecting feedback

Hey, not sure if this has been brought up or addressed, but I haven't been able to earn ink through watching ads on my computer since the website update went live.

Was the ability to earn ink through ads on your computer phased out in the new website update?

I used to be able to watch ads all the time and is how I normally earned ink, but since the update, it always just says "no free ink offers", that never used to happen and no other circumstances have changed (same wi-fi and location ect.)

I can still earn ink through watching ads on the mobile app, but not the desktop, so I was just wondering if anyone else was experiencing this and if it was part of the update

Since no one else reported this issue - @michaelson, is it normal for the progress bar on ad revenue to just disappear? I'm still 30 or so away from a hundred(older picture), but a few days after the first update the bar that should be over Balance just disappeared on my dashboard. I thought the Cover update would fix it but it's still gone.

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I'm glad that the staff is fine, and I hope that Tapas is able to continue work soon on fixing more things with this redesign (although, understandably, there'll probably be major delays considering the pandemic).

It's been a month now, though, and I think that a lot of the initial criticism received is still resonating - that it's unfair to creators to have had a site-wide beta test pushed on them and impact their readership. I really dislike that Tapas has become essentially a Webtoon clone, and reading on desktop is now just a chore that I'd rather not be bothered with. I think one of Tapas' biggest issues was simply that it's mobile app just wasn't that good and needed to be more intuitive, but now work towards fixing that has made the exact same problems bleed onto the desktop. Tapas had a superior desktop experience to Webtoon, which is why I preferred it for reading on desktop and preferred Webtoon for reading on mobile, and it's just disappointing to me as both a creator and a reader that random, unnecessary changes came out and haven't gone away, and are still managing to harm the user experience.

I'm not going to make this any longer, since there have already been rants -- I just want this to be my feedback made on the forum. I'm very close to graduation and would love to move towards doing comics or stories as a means of making money (especially considering I'll probably be stuck at home for a good while because of the Coronavirus), and before last month I would have readily picked Tapastic as a platform of choice for doing it. But now... I really don't enjoy being a user, and I hope a lot is done soon on making the experience not just patched and fixed but cohesive and good.

@michaelson @Yoon any insight to this?

as for my usual dosage of disgruntled sass, how long does it take a website with an actual company and pipeline production managing it to put banners back in? You've got the option to upload one built into the Dashboard but I can't tell if it was someone putting them back in who got distracted halfway or if it's just the leftover settings from pre-update that weren't removed. Uploading a banner with that option to do so only for it to still appear as those generic genre-based colors is sorta rubbing salt into the wound, don't ya think?

I know it's a stressful time right now due to the pandemic, but as people have stated already, it's been over a month now and there are still a lot of things you guys seem to be blatantly dodging or just leaving to let sit without any clarification or answers.

If you're not planning on making them available again then that's your decision, but at least remove the option to upload and communicate the change so we can be informed.

You say that but episode tags haven't done anything in years. It's not hurting anybody to leave it there, a text that it's unused at the moment will do. No need to be so antsy weekly.

so all we've achieved with highlighting that is pointing out yet another issue with tapas' accessibility but that's a whoooole other pot of tea that I'm not really into brewing rn.

The lack of functionality for both banners and tags are both issues in and of themselves lol Just because something else also happens to be an issue doesn't mean you should discount the first issue, it just means now you have two issues They're minor issues in the grand scheme of things, yes, but I don't see how one existing should discount the other, that's all.

(also i'm sure creators who played with meta tags as a part of their stories ex. harry bogosian, or users who depended on tags for decent SEO would beg to differ that the broken tagging system "isn't hurting anybody" lmao now they DEFINITELY don't do anything now that they don't even show up attached to episodes anymore, and that is definitely a drawback all on its own lol)

It's not a matter of being "antsy", I've already got a foot out the door lol It's a matter of making sure those issues aren't being forgotten about or pushed aside because people are still demanding for them and patiently waiting. I don't want to see people's patience get worn thin when that level of communication could have just been there in the first place.

I'll also add that it was just a point tacked on to the tag I did for the previous user who posted here a couple days ago, as tagging the staff typically always gets a faster response. At the rate the forum threads move, stuff gets buried easily so it's encouraged to tag staff members when you can if you need their immediate attention, which also includes reporting bugs. That was the main reason I responded, everything else was a dose of salt regarding my concerns, meant for staff. Just like reporting the bugs, it's not really something that I'm intending to turn into deeper discussion on a user level.

I take it that banners don’t come back then?
And we are now happy with the standard collar given?

We have a prototype version which has the top banner (Series Banner; it's not the same as the previous one.) and the product team is developing a live version now. Please give us time and wish us luck. We'll see if we can release a new version.
Thank you,

I don't know if it's just me because we have a storm here today, but the website is being incredibly slow. Like I will click a heart and it doesn't register until 5 seconds later. It's making it difficult to go through comic updates since there are so many clicks to get to the update.

I have to first click update alerts. Wait for it to load. Then click the notification itself (which sometimes takes multiple clicks). Wait for it to load. Then I have to reorder the list to newest (because it keeps resetting to oldest for some series for some reason). Wait for it to load. Then I can FINALLY click on the new episode. Wait for it to load. Then heart it. Wait for it to load.

Rinse and repeat for ten different series.

Same for me, and I think I'm on a different continent than you.

It actually seems to be loading faster now that I wrote that out. lol ofc. But there is still the issue with taking waaay too many clicks to get to an update!

It's already afternoon where I am, and a holiday, and I spent part of the morning trying to catch up with comics and getting irritated because of how unresponsive the website was haha Glad it's working better now... maybe it means updates? As in, good updates!

I mean, just off the top of my head . . .

The faulty ink conversion system problems that were pointed out in a separate thread that were never followed up on despite being assured by staff that they would.

The 'politics' concerning the site-wide beta test push that has annoyed plenty and hasn't had any sort of real benefit beyond being another LINE Webtoons clone.

The bare bones novel tools and visibility opportunities (compared to comics) that seem to have gone largely ignored since their initial release with no hope of becoming any more sophisticated than Notepad++.

The lack of transparency between staff and community that's become more and more limited as the years and updates go by.

I can keep going lmao I know you guys are undoubtedly working hard over there, but from a lot of our perspectives, there's very little to show for it (beyond bug fixes and, yknow, the spam bot nonsense). And that includes communication.

Good to hear, hope to actually see the results of this soon.

to add to that earlier list btw of things that "haven't been addressed" because i mentioned this already and it hasn't been touched on. but yknow, whatever, i'll give y'all the benefit of the doubt for not wanting to read one of my classic novella posts :V

this might be sorta random, but this was from one of @michaelson's posts in the "Apologies for the Spam" thread that is now locked.

sooo i guess this algorithm includes comics that have been dead for years? mind you that's in the Genre-specific trending tabs that show up on the sidebars of solo comics, but I don't see how they should be built any differently if it's still "trending". why tf are starting out comics having to compete with Rock & Riot, Treehouse, and Fail By Error, among others? They're all great comics mind you, but I don't see why they're getting top spots in the trending and popular pages when they haven't been active, some for upwards of years (Treehouse hasn't updated in half a decade).

I'm wondering if the comics in the binge catagory will ever be switched out for others?