How do you feel about page buffers?

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

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How would you prefer that pages be released?

Poll ended at Wed May 01, 2019 5:32 pm

I'd like to see groups of pages posted as soon as they are available.
2
6%
I'd prefer to have extra pages kept in a buffer and see one page per week.
29
81%
I don't really care.
2
6%
Other (specify below).
3
8%
 
Total votes: 36

Excellion
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon May 01, 2017 6:40 pm

Re: How do you feel about page buffers?

Post by Excellion »

Late to the party, but i would say i find myself agreeing with HedAurabesh observations: Having a (semi) regular update pattern for a webcomic tends to increase its reader base health. If i were to venture a guess as to the why i would would assume a regular interval encourages people to check back at this set pacing, thus keeping them engaged.

I never really checked this before but i note my own list of read webcomics contains about 30 entries. Out of these a total of 28 update at a semi-regular schedule ranging from daily to bi-weekly (Alongside a couple of manga that post entire chapters on a monthly basis). The remaining 2 that have no set schedule are Outsider and Galaxion (The latter currently being on an 8 month hiatus as of writing). Outsider is an exception mostly because it ticks a whole lot of boxes on my "Things i like in a webcomic" list. Space opera? Complex world building with a lot of background information (The Insider)? Following a specific cast of characters to keep the story focussed even though there is a larger world? Hard Sci-Fi basis? Yes, Yes, Yes and another Hell Yes to that!

That said: If my mind is somewhat similar to that of other people i suppose other readers enjoy Outsider as well, yet eventually end up pushing it onto the "Binge read or forget" pile the same way i did with other comics that updated infrequently. Looking at the forums i believe i can see some signs of this: Outsider seems to have gathered a large base of hardcore fans over the years it has been publishing, fans that don't mind waiting for new pages even if it takes months. At the same time the amount of semi-long term fans seem to be lower than average for most comics i tend to frequent.

And since i am already digging around the forum for "proof" for lets try some more shall we? If i take Graphtreon's historical Patreon data and compare it to the Outsider RSS feed i believe there is a relation between Patreon growth and the frequency of pages published:
  1. In 2017 a total of 10 pages were published at mostly irregular interval. Patreon saw a small spike in June (3 pages were posted at once on the 29th of May). Beyond that the graph was fairly stable.
  2. In 2018 we had almost weekly pages spree between the 23th of April and the 9th of July. This coincided with the largest bump in patrons and donations on the graphs history, alongside Arioch being a "Hot Creator Jun 2018" on Graphtreon. The next three pages were all-at-once in September and resulted in a bump, which while noticeable was clearly smaller than the "3 pages spread 3 weeks" bumps.
  3. This month (3th of April) we had three weekly pages in a row, and again there is a noticeable bump in the graph. Ignore the drop on the 1st of April: That happened to every patreon i know of.
So what does this all indicate? Well, mostly that Excellion likes playing around with statistics that likely have an abysmal credibility interval due to being too small in size while likely ignoring a lot of other factors that may apply. Also, that staying on topic is hard: Writing "If buffer pages work for Arioch it seems like a great idea, as it will also likely increase readership" was all i wanted to do until i noticed a post with numbers and observations. O well. Brevity was never my forte.

Last thingy: The last few page releases consisting of a sketch / early draft on Patreon followed by a finalized page some time afterwards were great. I like to read the story earlier, and then seeing the page "ripened" into its final shape over time.

User avatar
cacambo43
Posts: 301
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2012 11:39 am
Location: The Space Coast
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Re: How do you feel about page buffers?

Post by cacambo43 »

I can only say, anecdotally, that the few people I've introduced to Outsider, shortly after I "found" it, have not visited in years, even when I told them there were updates. Their comments are noncomittal and the long hiatuses turned them completely off to it. To each their own, I suppose, but I can't blame them either.

CJSF

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