I think part of it is the fact that you are active in the forums and therefore more of a real person. I wish more of the "top" creators actually hung around the forums and talked to people.

It's just so easy to talk bad about people who aren't around... (Not sure if the creators' absence is a cause or an effect.)

It is sort of funny that you're upset for lack of controversy. :) Hey, you should be. Look at all the free publicity that having an "anti-fan club" will get you!

Heh, well come to think about it, it's probably ok to talk a bit bad about people who aren't around, lol!
Because when else can you talk bad about them? That's the best time! :)

Yeah, anyway, if you've got your comic hosted here, you may as well join in with the community, this was never just a comic hosting site, it's always been a community site as well as a host. So, go ahead and talk a little bad. ^_^

Hahaha, there are no "top" creators really, more page views doesn't mean you're better in any way. We're just the same dweebs we are when we have a readership of 10 people, or even if 2 million people read your comic (NO ONE here has that, at least on their DD site). It's true, In fact some absolutely brilliant comic makers here get almost no people looking at there stuff (the kind of people who could teach you volumes), while some talentless twits on the net get 100s of thousands a day.

As for mentioning certain comics like Rainbow carousel etc... Well I just had a blind spot for "manga" style, gamer, all that... I mean, there are 20 in the lists and I just talked about what I vaguely knew. Rainbow is an amazing looking comic with an affing brilliant template but I've never been into it, just like most people aren't really into Pinky TA, Ha, I bet none of you are! :P
.Nario Brothers is popular, but again; I don't really know it. That doesn't mean it's not great though :)
-It's another one with a good template!

Ha, and Number 1 spots. It's stupid really. Craving keeps getting mentioned but it's only #1 in the strips... it's never ever been 1# over all. It's because we have two lists. A comic can be #10 overall but still be in the top 5 over in the strips because they have less readers apparently. Craving actually tends to be low comparatively, about #5 I think at the moment? (It'll move up now though) Heh, just goes to show dumb lists really are.

Comics should be ranked by awesomeness, not popularity! There should be a...er...a machine, which is able to...measure...awesomeness. We could then use this to work out which are the most awesome comics, and list them accordingly!

Not everybody's going to agree on the comics in the top places. They're the most read comics, but everybody has their own opinions on which comics are the best. If you think about it, it makes sense. It's like with movies. The films that get the critical acclaim and people say are great aren't necessarily the ones tonnes of people go to see. Having lots of ads, lots of pages, very polished looking pages, a catchy title or just having no-risk mass appeal can push a comic into the top places. A comic which a lot of people think is 'alright' can occupy a higher slot than a comic which a handful of people think is amazing.
But there's no way to improve the system for the top comics. When we went by ratings, it lead to the 'fives or die' culture and a terribly competitive atmosphere. If we went by number of comments or faves, then commenting would no longer feel like something you do if you want to say something, both it and faving would become highly political actions which could change the status of a comic.

If you think a comic is good, the best you can do is to comment, maybe even PQ, or put that comic in your 'recommended' bit on your profile. Most creators it will make their day if just one person takes the time to say 'hey, I read your comic, I know you put a lot of effort in. Thanks for making it!' I know that personally, I don't mind my position, floating around 80th to 200th, because I have a good relationship with my readers. They're really great people.

Darth Mongoose
'hey, I read your comic, I know you put a lot of effort in. Thanks for making it!' I know that personally, I don't mind my position, floating around 80th to 200th, because I have a good relationship with my readers. They're really great people.

I agree with this. Nothing better then to have someone personally tell you what they think of your work. Really good motivation.

Yep comments are best. The lists are really for something else...
They don't gauge DD popularity anyway because none of them (high ranked comics) get all their visitors from DD people. In fact most of that interest comes from outside DD.

Darth, I don't know if this is advice you'll appreciate or not, but here it is: Your art is really cool, your comic is very well made, but the size of your files will make is very hard for people on slower connections to go through your comic archive. Especially with image files almost 1 meg in size. You can compress them down to 150K and still retain the look of them almost perfectly in a JPG format which is THE best format for web art of that kind.

-don't believe the hype about PNG, it has specific uses, but isn't good for everything. PNG 24 is great for retaining quality with minimal compression in photo and complicated art files for print and video work, but not good for the web. May as well use Tiff... It's not a really web format, not for web pages anyway... PNG 8 on the other hand is just a open source Gif alternative (with all those limitations and different benefits). Jpg seems to be the best there is for complex art on the net, quality loss is irrelevant because that only happens over many, many loadings and viewings at the hgher compressions (I've got ten year old jpgs with not much loss) and you can always update the webfiles with new Jpgs made from your uncompressed copies anyway.

-It's just that you will limit the audience you should be legitimately be accumulating by having the files so large.

Oh, thanks Ozone! I had no idea my pages were causing slow DL. I'll see what I can do about making them smaller from here on. I'd been told 'use pngs!' but I think it's a mindset that comes from back in the old days when jpgs tended to come out looking horrible.
See? That's why people NEED feedback and comments. If people don't say anything, you can never know.

Darth Mongoose
Comics should be ranked by awesomeness, not popularity! There should be a...er...a machine, which is able to...measure...awesomeness. We could then use this to work out which are the most awesome comics, and list them accordingly!

It would run on index cards. Like the Bat Computer in the old Adam West TV series.

Along the lines of image compression, Photoshop has a neat 'Save For Web' feature, that can compress files a huge amount- I used it on my entire archives this morning (after reading what Ozone said), and it's shrunk 500 kb monsters to 150 KB, with the two files nearly indistinguishable. It did brutally rape the colors from some of my older comics, but they're old, so nobody really cares.

These are some REALLY good points, that when assembled, will make ANYONE feel better about the subject

ozoneocean
It's true, In fact some absolutely brilliant comic makers here get almost no people looking at there stuff (the kind of people who could teach you volumes), while some talentless twits on the net get 100s of thousands a day.

That made my heart smile.

Darth Mongoose
Comics should be ranked by awesomeness, not popularity! There should be a...er...a machine, which is able to...measure...awesomeness. We could then use this to work out which are the most awesome comics, and list them accordingly!

Yes, we do need an Awesome-o-meter...

SteveMyers22
It would run on index cards. Like the Bat Computer in the old Adam West TV series.

Your in charge of the Awesome-o-meter's design and construction.

Hijuda
The #1 spot commands much more attention than the #6 spot, #3 spot, or even the #2 spot.

That's true. When a comic becomes #1, it's popularity triples because of people who see it on the list and think, "Hey, it's #1 for a reason! I think I'll read it now!"


So my final solution is simply this. Direct your attention the main page please, in the lower right hand corner of the page, you'll notice a teeny weeny itsy bitsy table called "Comics that need commenting". Surely something that small and out of the way isn't going to help those comics at all. So why not, make it larger, and put it higher up on the page?

Yeah, I do agree with Rusty. Putting the "Comics in need of comments" thing someplace OTHER than where the sun don't shine on our beautiful front page would be great. But that would require them to rearrange the whole layout, and that might take too much time or coding. I mean, they have to figure out spots for everything to go while still making the page visually appealing.

usedbooks
It's just so easy to talk bad about people who aren't around... (Not sure if the creators' absence is a cause or an effect.)

Yeah... it's sorta like bitching about the popular girl in school when her back is turned... XD I can honestly say I've done it myself. It was only when I actually befriended someone with waaay more pageviews than myself on DeviantArt and she said to me that some of the comments I'd said were hurtful to her - firstly I was kinda amazed that she'd taken the time to read what I'd written but secondly it made me realise that however many views or comments or what rating you have a person is still a person and they still hurt when someone says nasty stuff about them. From that point onwards I've made a conscious effort NOT to bitch about popularity. Not only does it make you look like you've got sour grapes (endearing people to you much less and thusly meaning they probably won't listen to you and are even less likely to look at your work) but it also hurts someone. And that is not nice! ;o;

So my final solution is simply this. Direct your attention the main page please, in the lower right hand corner of the page, you'll notice a teeny weeny itsy bitsy table called "Comics that need commenting". Surely something that small and out of the way isn't going to help those comics at all. So why not, make it larger, and put it higher up on the page?
I agree with this... the "Comics that need comments" thing has never really been that prominently placed on the front page - it's even worse now! I vote for scrapping that WoW ad and putting it there! XD

Puff
Yeah, I do agree with Rusty. Putting the "Comics in need of comments" thing someplace OTHER than where the sun don't shine on our beautiful front page would be great. But that would require them to rearrange the whole layout, and that might take too much time or coding. I mean, they have to figure out spots for everything to go while still making the page visually appealing.

That's a good point, but I don't think it would take that much effort. If they simply move the news post down, and put the Comics that need commenting in it's original spot.