Thank you for bringing that issue up in the recent newsletter. There is still a lot of room for confusion, though!
1) There are lots of non-comic episodes that I KNOW were allowed, at least in the past before you guys rolled out the profile post notification feature. For example, in one of the past newsletters, you spotlighted a Christmas collab done by several creators and posted in their comic episodes. Are these things still allowed in episodes, now that we have the ability to post them on our profiles and notify the readers?
If they are not allowed anymore, should creators go back and delete them from their episodes?
If they ARE allowed, could you please provide a more specific guideline on what kind of non-comic contents are still allowed in the episodes, along with examples? Maybe they're allowed because they're not advertising any offsite links, and the examples of such would be fan art feature updates (which is another one that I'm not sure is allowed), recommendations for other Tapastic comics, etc.
2) Not a question, but a plea for understanding. I get the feeling that the staff doesn't see why we find this confusing.
One of the reasons why we're so confused is because it isn't a norm for a comic hosting site to have a separate place where we can post things and notify our readers. (This is a PLUS for Tapastic, by the way.) Therefore, people are used to posting non-comic updates -- hiatus notices, fan art features, etc. -- as regular comic updates/episodes. THAT's the norm in the webcomic world.
While it's perfectly fine for Tapastic to not follow that norm since you have provided a separate place for that stuff, please understand why people find it confusing.
Please also understand why many of us don't want to report other creators. NONE of us wants to have our favorite comics blocked just because they posted a holiday greeting episode. I'd much rather see a fanart feature episode (or even a "check me out on social media" episode or whatever) and still be able to access the rest of the comic. If they're repeatedly spamming such episodes, sure, that gets annoying, but still, the whole comic? In order for this policy to be enforced more effectively and to get the users to report their favorite creators, the ability for the staff to block specific episodes is needed very badly IMO.
Another thing: profile post notifications from the creators whom you're subscribed to, VS all the other activity notifications. These two are very different in nature and should not be lumped together IMO. Creators who have lots of episodes get like 100 activity notifications every time they gain a new reader who Likes every episode. Or non-creator readers who comment a lot -- they probably get a constant influx of notifications from replies and whatnot. When that happens, important notices from other creators that they're subbed to get buried in the pile. We want to avoid that.
Is there a way to differentiate them into separate notification areas? Maybe like how dA does it (as much as I dislike dA, it's one thing I find convenient about them) and have different feeds? Or at least when you go to the notifications page, instead of listing everything in chronological order, divide the list into different categories?
3) If you have an episode that's mostly comic, but stick a "hey check out my dA" or "look at these awesome fanarts" thing at the end, is that still not allowed? I can see why that might be iffy because it's a slippery slope... I mean, where does one draw the line between "enough comic" and "not enough comic and therefore spam" anyway? But yeah.
4) Support program episodes. I'm PRETTY sure these are allowed, but unfortunately, not 100% sure anymore (and this is why we need clarifications!).
But here's the thing. To a reader, "please check out my support program page" is no different than "please check out my Patreon." I can understand why Tapastic might make an exception for support program episodes and even encourage them. It's potentially beneficial to Tapastic. The problem is, allowing/encouraging these creates additional room for confusion.
Something like "these are the ONLY non-comic episodes that we allow" would be helpful, if that is the case.
Entering brainstorming mode: maybe even have these rules in the episode addition page, like how you have the "don't upload stuff that you didn't make" bit right now. A collapsible list of the most important rules/ the rules that a lot of people are confused about/ etc. with a link to the full set of rules would be very handy. End brainstorming mode.
That got pretty long... I think that's all for now. ^^; Thank you for listening to our concerns!