What if we reduce the promo threads?

[Katzalcoatl]

Don't worry you can always tag me if needed. I am also new on tapas forums but I have tons of life experience. I am always happy to help a fellow tapas member in the scope of my ability.

[Katzalcoatl]

I don't think that would be a good solution.
The way I see it, people who don't spam are way more effective in grabbing people's attention while those who spam tend to get ignored.
This happens in all life issues not just promo threads.

Spam is never a good thing it makes the message you want to get accross lose credibility.
The way things are now, promo threads are not hurting the consumers but the promoters.

Having mods limiting your promo threads to just 1 place would hurt since it will get lost in the sea of new promos just like how it is lost today.

[candiedcotton]

That's what I'm saying, though.

Most people spam a multitude of threads.

If they each have a single thread they can only use for their product, then they can't spam. Hell, put a limit on one update post a day and you're solid. It works really well. I used to moderate a pretty heavily populated community of artists back in the day and it was the method we used, and it was really nice and orderly because of it.

People are already getting lost in seas of promo threads, but they're getting lost in a sea of promo comments IN the sea of promo threads on top of it.

[cherrystark]

Something I don't like from the promos I see here is that most members just promo to promo without having a target audience. For example, if you promote your last chapter without explaining what your story is about, then you won't truly create an interest.

This isn't just a Tapas problem. I mod some promo groups on FB for Kindle writers and a lot of them are convinced that adding a random except to their images is the best way to attract readers. 95% of us have no idea what the story is about so the random excerpts are meaningless.

[Katzalcoatl]

Sorry, forgot to mention but there is always a way around that system like creating false accounts/bots. That's why I said it's not a valid solution. It will create new problems in unexpected ways.

A good solution would be educating new people on how marketing works and teach them not to spam. We can't really do more than that. Unless a moderator is constantly checking forums and warning people.
But I know how lazy and cheap some companies can be regarding moderators.
Many times they prefer to make things automatically instead of paying a person to read each and every message.

Sadly creating an automated system can bring many errors and lack of judgement. Ai just aren't advanced enough to completely replace human interactions in certain situations. I consider promoting being one of them.

[candiedcotton]

There's literally always going to be people who will try and game any system you come up with. That's just how communities are. And no solution is going to be perfect. But we can potentially find the most optimal solution.

Fake accounts and bots don't matter because the threads would be based on the title of the product, not who's posting it. So that wouldn't be an issue. They might make a duplicate thread, but that's easy to auto-check and handled by mods or automation.

You can only educate those who care to be educated, unfortunately. Most people who post in the promo threads probably haven't ever glanced the rest of the forum and would have no idea of any rules.

[VibrantFox]

You can only educate those who care to be educated, unfortunately. Most people who post in the promo threads probably haven't ever glanced the rest of the forum and would have no idea of any rules.

Big this

lots of us who've been on the forums for along time have tried to show new folks "the way" but really it only ever matters to those who actually bother to read and learn so the trying to educate happens way less

for some it takes learning the hard way and seeing folks get annoyed and others just fizzle out when they don't see results and go elsewhere so it's a problem that sort of tends to itself but also operates in an endless cycle

[candiedcotton]

Pretty much, yeah.

I've written software for forum moderation a couple of times, and while it's not perfect, it really does help mods so much. But it's also on the community.

I think if we had title-specific threads, it'd just overall be better. People who enjoy certain titles can follow those threads for news, updates, art, whatever. There wouldn't be seas of posts to scroll through to find an interesting title. There'd be way less spam. And if someone made a duplicate of a title, all you gotta do is flag it for mods to check.

It's really easy and it does work.

It would also encourage people to update daily to get pushed toward the top.

[Katzalcoatl]

Details regarding your solution would have to be wroked out. Each time you post I get a better idea of what you meant. I liked when you mentioned slow post on promo forums. If it is like the discord slow-post option I think it will work. Limiting to 1 post per day on promos section and adding a slow option to not allow multiple members to post on promos around every 2-3 minutes or something like that.

In other words, limiting posts per account on promos section to once or twice per day and limiting posts in promo section between members to 1 every 2-3 minutes.

Don't think it will be implemented but it could work.

[candiedcotton]

That's what I'd do, yeah. And it'd be really easy to implement programmatically. A web dev could do it in an hour, easily.

[VibrantFox]

i can't speak on the coding but i think it'd depend on whats available to this forums base (which is Discourse iirc) and what options are available in this sites currently implemented version

coz it's definitely old enough that dark more isn't something that can be added in per a response i'd gotten a while back in a thread asking about it so anything beyond that is ???

[Katzalcoatl]

It depends on how complicated or simple they programmed their forums.
You know how it is, some people make a complex system making even the most simple modification take hours just because they didn't think ahead.

Assuming their forum system is simple, it will still take time for tapas to aprove the changes but we can propose it for now.

If they reject it, at least we tried.

[candiedcotton]

Ah for real? I figured they used some combo of sql and php. That's usually what I work with if I'm doing web stuff (and javascript of course). You could do a check during the php processing of data to see if a title exists in the db already and then return false to the poster (denied post) if it did.

[candiedcotton]

Those are the folks who don't understand OOP programming.

Drives me up the wall.

[bulgariansumo]

Instead, let them each have a thread dedicated to their work, and they can't post outside of that thread if to promote said work.

I've seen a few threads like this, and none of them have made me compelled to click unless I was already keeping up with their work. Considering the imbalance of writers vs. readers here, I feel like this would just clog up the promo thread in a new way. The current system has its fair share of problems, but at least it fosters a situation where creators might be see another work they're interested in (even if it's kind of rare in practice.)

I do like OP's idea, though I'd miss the more unique promotion threads. Maybe having the a few generic promo threads and limiting forum users to only creating more specific threads might work?

[VibrantFox]

i only ever found out about it after doing some digging and checking the automated responses (the close after 30 days thing) and managed to backtrack that to the site host but beyond that uh...no clue ^^;;

i'm definitely not a coding person (most i've got under my belt is basic html and dreamweaver) so i leave that talk to the tech heads

[cherrystark]

Sometimes I wish there was an independent marketplace for web fiction/comics. There are so many sites for web fiction these days that I think everyone has trouble with marketing. At least with an independent site, you could write the code to however you wanted

[Katzalcoatl]

Can't speak for tapas since I haven't investigated how they programmed forums. But I have seen it happen with many clients.
Some create a super fancy system that is so complex it is hard to modify in a short time while others prefer to save money creating a mess of the coding.

If they went traditional html5 coding (meaning php, java, sql, etc. Modifications are possible) then all it would take is for tapas directors to approve the suggestion.

[cherrystark]

I've seen a few threads like this, and none of them have made me compelled to click unless I was already keeping up with their work. Considering the imbalance of writers vs. readers here, I feel like this would just clog up the promo thread in a new way.

The promo threads only really work if you're popular. I got more reads on Tapas by simply existing and occasionally promoting than spamming people.

[Katzalcoatl]

You can create your own blog and advertise on facebook or pay for adds. There is no cheap way to promote yourself unless you have the patience.