Now that you talk about it, I guess you are right... I don't know much about this website actually cause I'm new to this website... But, according to my analytics this thing happens in most of the other websites too...
I'm sorta new still, too. Started about a year ago, maybe less, but never poked around into how things work. I don't get many Views anyway but tonight it occurred to me that (lacking regular comments or likes) I may not have anyone reading anything at all. It may be an illusion.
I think a view is counted when a unique visitor stays for a set amount of time or scrolls for a set amount of distance. I don't think it's just every time an episode is accessed, otherwise refreshing your own pages a bunch of times would give everyone a ton of views.
Lately I have been clicking and editing my episodes just to check whether I contribute to views too. I don't.
As far as whether or not other people are viewing, I get a rough estimate when I see the views on my fresh episodes. If someone made it that far, they are probably reading.
There is an option of anonymous reading as well, so people could be using that.
The creator doesn't add the number of views by loading the pages... However, if you log in through another account and see your story, then your views will be counted. It is also counted when you directly start reading the next episode by scrolling down... So basically, only the reader's views are accepted ( unlike Webtoon )...
That's kinda the point of my original question... does Tapas do anything to try to assure a View is most likely an actual read?
Patterns in my data don't assure me Views are actually reading. I don't think we can know that the new views on a new episode are the same users that read the last one or two, so we're only hoping the new views mean we have an on-going reader.
I don't know about you but I often accidentally clicking on my series chapter on dashboard and go back quickly. It will still be counted as view even though I was only on the page for a split second. even if you just going back to replyto comments, it counted as view.
Look for an average. You can't know whether new views are your readers. What matters is constant readership which is pretty clear if you see the pattern.
That's strange. Used to happen to me before but now it has stopped altogether. I was, in fact, wondering whether Tapas has changed the algorithms recently.
Yeah they don't really tell us. Smackjeeves used to have a separation for individual viewer and then total aggregate views that I really liked
The thing is... it doesn't really matter that much that they don't? Your position in the "popular" ranking is based only on likes, and your position in "trending" seems to be something to do with comments or new bookmarks. While views are displayed on pages and the comic if readers look at the info, they're kind of a meaningless stat.
Hypothetically a person could spend money buying views to boost their ad revenue... except they'd need to have already reached 250 subs to unlock the ability to get their money from it, and it'd probably cost more to buy the views than they'd get from the ad revenue, and it wouldn't make their novel or comic more visible, so it'd be pointless. It's a relatively solid system that's also easy to manage on Tapas' end due to being simple. Creators can't clickbait people into boosting their visibility, because readers actually have to give you likes and bookmarks for your work to move up the ratings.
Instead of fussing over views, it's better to focus on making a work that's effective at accumulating likes and comments. Those are the important currencies around here.
I dunno, as long as there is a bit of activity on the episodes, I am good. Also, sub vs unsub helps me see if the fiction holding attention or people are dissappointed with it.
darthmongoose, I'm not even interested in ranking & such. I'd just like to know that the small number of Views I receive represent someone actually reading the story. But I'm increasingly suspicious that View numbers are really only 'clicked on' tallies. If so, many of my "Views" may just be "glances" (click-throughs) & readers are fewer than the few I thought I had.
Life is too short to spend much time filling up pages that are left unread.
I wish some Tapas support person could weigh in with definitive information but I'm not sure they look at these forums. I know they didn't offer any help on threads where I and others were struggling with getting Book Covers updated.
One guess, if they use the same logic as for their google analytics page views, a view is counted as soon as a new page/episode is loaded and the url is updated at the top. It's the easiest way to register a page view compared to waiting for a set amount of time. But I could be wrong!
1 month later
I think I have convincing evidence that Views here are no more than click counts rather than actual reads.
Here are graphs of the view totals to date for three of my short stories. (The Ember series has not yet concluded.) I've omitted views for the 1st episodes since they are much higher than later views & tended to make the graphs harder to read.
What is of significance in the chart is how often the views of an episode are well below the views of later episodes. My reasoning is this: Readers are NOT, for example, skipping episodes & reading later ones.
Example: did 20-some readers really skip EMBER episodes 2, 3, 4 & 5 and then read 6, 7 & 8?
Example: did dozens of reader really skip NICOLLE episodes 8, 10, 16 but read all those others?
NOPE. But a lot of people could have clicked on high-view-count episodes and decided not to read it & maybe not read any of the rest of a story. Logically, reads ought to tend to decrease (e.g., as readers get bored) or remain fairly flat. It's illogical that many people reading your story read the earlier parts less than they do the middle or end.
So, my conclusion is that the lower View counts (maybe even the lowest) are close to the actual number of readers you have. Depressing in my own case.
Is your story set to take the reader to the FIRST episode or most recent? Ones set to "most recent" actually annoy me because I'm giving them a view for episode # 342 when I haven't gotten to read episodes 1-343.
All three were set as:
"Descending Order. New readers will start from your most recent episode."
Agreed, that was a poor choice from the reader's POV.
However... if a new reader was sent to NICOLLE Ep 6 as the latest (for example) & they decide to read the story, won't they also end up reading Eps 3 & 5? The data don't seem to show that, though.
In fact, thinking about it, if I had sent new people to the 1st Ep, it would have probably masked the fact that people seem to be opening Ep 6 but never 3 & 5. It would have simply looked like a lot of people opened Ep 1 & maybe Ep 2 & not returned to the rest of the story (e.g., bored).
Now, certainly, some Eps have multiple View counts due to a reader(s) not completing an Ep & returning to finish, or wanting to re-read an Ep. That, however, still tends to indicate Views are only how many times a page is opened. So, I still think it like that the Ep with the lowest number of Views is nearer what actual Reader numbers are. It could be even fewer than that, if Readers are re-reading Eps.
