TWCL

[LukeSurl]

I posted this on reddit, thought it'd be worth sharing here as well:

Quote:

Yesterday a cartoon I made had a fair degree of success on Reddit. The quite nerdy joke about chess is at 3,909 up votes & 3,055 down votes (=+854) on the ‘funny’ subreddit as I write this (possibly a division between chess fans and non-fans there). It was also cross-posted to the chess, LGBT, gaygeek and gaymers subreddits as well. The cartoon in question is http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/1181 . It’s one of the jokes I’m most proud of, so I’m happy it got some attention. However that wasn’t the link redditors were directed to. Instead the link which got this attention was directly to the .png image from my server. This is something I’m not happy about. It happens frequently to lots of comics on Reddit and a LOT more on often on Stumbleupon. It isn’t a new thing – on the ‘comics’ subreddit there’s a mantra: ‘page not image’. Posting a link directly to the image, rather than the page on the artist’s site they have set up to display the comic will, in their words, “make the Mods go hulk smash on you”. A link to a rehosted comic (i.e. uploaded to imjur or similar) is a mortal sin. The logic is fairly obvious – the webcartoonist will have other things on that page they’d like you to see. There may be ads which help pay the hosting bills, links to the rest of the archives of that comic, notices about merchandise, convention appearances etc. All this is lost with the direct image link. Critically, the chance to convert a casual stumbler into a regular reader is reduced to near zero. Furthermore there’s a disservice to the reader – many sites have extra content connected with the cartoon – blog posts, discussion sections, mouseover text etc. A more nebulous point is that, due to the way pagecounters work, the webcartoonist probably isn’t even going to know that anyone was looking unless they happen to come across it on StumbleUpon/Reddit etc. Probably the only way they’ll even know that a spike in views happened is when the bandwidth bill is higher this month. It happens to everyone, however it’s worse for artists who are not so well known. If, for instance, an xkcd or a SMBC comic is directly linked to, within three minutes someone is going to track down the page link, and any visitor is likely to know who deserves the credit (and possibly an archive trawl in the near future). If it’s by someone who’s basically unknown this is far less likely to happen. Unknowns like myself dream that a few cartoons we’ve made will go viral, and maybe this would be our ‘big break’. For example: http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/916 and http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/1243 both were widely shared. You’ve probably read them. You probably didn’t know they were done by me however, as the links which were most distributed were either direct links to the images (and no one looks at their address bar really) or to images hosted without my permission on Imgur without a shred of attribution. A common variant of the ‘chat’ cartoon that’s done the rounds has been expertly cropped to remove any identifying marks of my website whatsoever. Cartoonists could start sending DMCA emails and that all day, but to be honest I recon it would be like cutting the heads of a hydra, and we’d much rather spend my time drawing comics. Like I said before, this is a lot worse on StumbleUpon than it is on Reddit – Reddit has a number of saints who will track down the original page and add it to the discussion threads. Please remember when submitting links that the webcartoonist has worked hard to make the cartoon and, in 90% of cases, is probably paying a hosting service for the privilege of providing it to you. Please take the effort to share their work in the way they want it to be seen. Thanks, Luke LukeSurl.com

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[NaarieKermie]

Some great points. Since I don't make a funny, viral worthy comic I never realized this was a problem... but now that you've pointed it out I can't believe I didn't see it before. What you're saying is completely true and I can say this from personal experience with your comic.

From clicking through your links I just realized I've seen this comic before. I can't remember exactly where but I do recall it was only an image and not a link to the site itself. I found the comic to be hilarious and I wanted to see more... but I had no idea where it came from. With no link to the page or url on the comic itself there was no way I could find where it came from. This being the internet I eventually forgot about it and moved on.

It seems to me that it would be more beneficial to everyone (creators and readers alike) to have the source linked when posting something on Reddit or StumbleUpon. Honestly, it just seems obvious. Didn't we all learn in school to cite our sources when writing research papers? Doesn't it just make sense to do the same if you find something online you see as share-worthy? Wouldn't you want to share the entire site with everyone and not just the image itself??

Speaking as a fellow webcomicker I hope your voice is heard. It's nice that people enjoy what we create but it would be even nicer if we got the credit for it.

[NK_Nutter]

The importance of putting your URL in the comic itself... I reckon this is more important than putting your name/sig on it (you should probably do that too).
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[Dutch]

Good news you got such a response though. I put a page up on both and got one view each... I don't think it even made the upload page for others to look at

But yes, when I've stumbled the odd page or (tried) to put something up on reddit, I give them the website, not just the picture in question. You're going to another page to view it anyway, it might as well be the source page, eh?
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[tpiro]

Hmm...

http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/kx8xp/the_problem_of_free_will_problem/
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[LukeSurl]

tpiro wrote:

Hmm... http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/kx8xp/the_problem_of_free_will_problem/

I don't know what it is about CYOA comics, but if I had a dollar for every time that image has been submitted to reddit without attribution...

Actually, can we agree that? One dollar, each time? Really could come in useful...
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[tpiro]

LukeSurl wrote:

tpiro wrote: Hmm... http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/kx8xp/the_problem_of_free_will_problem/ I don't know what it is about CYOA comics, but if I had a dollar for every time that image has been submitted to reddit without attribution... Actually, can we agree that? One dollar, each time? Really could come in useful...

Just a dollar? I've had images hotlinked on stumbleupon and reddit that have gained hundreds of thousands of page views. This easily costs me many hundreds of dollars in ad revenue. So no, I'd appreciate a little more than just a dollar!
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[SuitCase]

At the same time, you can see why a Reddit user might want to directly link to a png file. Cuts out the navigation\title cruft nobody cares about, makes the link easier to promote and be upvoted as a result.

Also, don't pretend the bandwidth costs you anything. I bet it didn't. The real issue is denial of new readers and denial of ad revenue opportunity. I'd say that while both of those would be nice, they're not anything you're particularly entitled to. It just kinda sucks, rather than it being a terrible slight to you and your comic.

Either way, if this was to happen to me, I'd subvert the choice of the Reddit submitter and try to redirect the direct link to a html page. There is an unfortunate technical problem in trying to notice this before your 15 minutes are over, though!
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Bittersweet Candy Bowl, a comic of love, drama and cats.
Updates 3 times a week!

[plughead]

Hey Luke

It's very, very, important for all of us to throw a name and/or URL on every single image we create. One-off gags are especially easy to share and pass around, and as creators, we have little control over how, when, or by whom, our work gets consumed or curated.

I've been collecting squillions of awesome images and comics off the web for years and years, and sadly, with many of them, I'll never know or remember who made them. Particularly if they've been discovered from a forum, a tumblr, a random link or some other 3rd-party site.

Luke, I've got your awesome "early internet" comic archived, and there's no identifiers on it at all. For shame!

Also, it's been awhile since a new WC podcast came out. This would make an excellent discussion topic. I wonder what Zoe et. al would have to say!
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Take care

Stef

http://sarahzero.com