Don't hit me if this question has been discussed yet...I've been away for a bit.

I'm coming up on a milestone - and when I say MILESTONE, I mean ACTUAL pages with panels and storytelling, which would make the milestone - 125 pages. But if I take those pages and add various research files, pin-ups, or recaps, I have a total of 192 pages, which means I could wait and announce my 200th page milestone.

Wow, this almost sounds like a math problem.

Still, the question is...How do YOU all recognize your milestones here at the 'Duck? With or without the filler?

Thanks :).

Just pages. Filler/bonuses don't count (to me anyway) because they don't advance a story or bring you closer to your destination.

If I think of it as a road trip and extra/bonus/filler is a turn-off to a road-side attraction or a pause at a rest stop. Therefore, it can't count toward a "milestone."

The problem, I think, is that after a while it can become a pain to work out how many pages of filler you have. It just becomes easier to use the actual number of pages, regardless of what they consist of. Personally, I keep filler pages out of my comic but even so, when I started here at DD, I would subtract the "Chapter" pages from the total. Now I don't - it just becomes confusing.

Ultimately, as long as you're not swapping back and forth all the time, you still only pass each milestone once, so I can't see why anyone would mind, whichever method you use.

Would you consider covers filler? (Just curious.)

From an admin perspective, pages are pages, what they are doesn't really matter too much for milestones.

For myself, covers are definitely part of the work and NOT filler. I would sometimes count filler as a page: depending on if I really wanted to announce the milestone (then I'd count them), or whether I was really proud of the comic pages done to reach the milestone (then I wouldn't count them).

i dont count filler. hell, there shouldnt be tons of filler anyways so it shouldnt be too much of a pain in the ass to wait until you get to the actual number. if you find it too hard to reach a milestone without filler, that probably tells me....you have TOO MUCH FILLER.
covers i could let slide, unless you were posting just tons of variations of a cover or something.
but filler for the sake of taking up space in a comic is a bad idea anyways, it's pretty lame to use it as a crutch to gain a milestone.

Filler is for pussies, covers however are a big part of the comic. they should be counted as a page, I have a cover every 15 pages so if I'd count all that as filler I'd be feeling a lot worse about myself...

I intentionally leave filler out of my comics. There is actually a whole bunch of stuff I could cram into Air Raid Robertson. There are concept sketches for certain characters, pin-ups, maps of various fictional settings, and other kinds of things like that.

However, it always kind of annoyed me when I go through an otherwise good comic on drunkduck and find that there's filler on every third page. It really throws off the flow of reading.

So, I made a decision to leave that sort of stuff out.

I would consider covers to be a valid part of the comic. However, that point is moot to me since most of my stuff is patterned after newspaper-styled comics.

FILLER! HAH! That's just a fancy name for t-shirt designs.

I don't usually do fillers for the simple fact that it puts the comic on hold for a day. My stories are usually pretty long and i'd like to finish them up as fast as I can :3. I don't recognize milestones most of the time unless someone posts and says something :S.

I've only had two milestones (50 pages, 1 year). I'm getting close to my 3rd (75 pages). (Haha, I hardly have anything compared to a lot of people here XD). I have no filler posted, actually, unless chapter/part covers count. I really only concider side stories, random pictures, ect. as filler. I choose not to include those things because I think it inturrups the flow and tone of my comic.

But anyway, all in all I wouldn't count filler.

I do funny images (april fools and Christmas for example) but they are not filler and do not replace proper updates.
They also get taken down after a short time so new readers wont be put off while reading the archive.
Filler just pisses me off!

we've counted a couple fillers, but we don't count guest comics.

edit - then again, Splash Damage is a strip comic so there may not even be a story to advance. We have a lot of filler because that's acceptable in strips. Of course, we've got a ton of story driven strips too...hmm...

Always without filler. That does not include cover pages to chapters as well.

It helps with DE because I count all pages by number in the titles.

TPCTH I just subtract all fillers and covers from the total to figure out page number.

I think I'd count my in depth background close ups because they do round out each issue with a more in depth view of my world. Random scribbles with knives in me however would not count towards my milestones. Nor the random character sheets =D.

I really really hate fillers. Never count them. If I ever have filler, I always delete it the next week with a new page. And I usually never have to use filler until it's finals time in college. By and large, I hate seeing filler and I hate using filler.

If you're gonna do milestone, I'd go back and just delete the filler. I hate going through comics and there's a 5 minute sketch of a character going, "OH HEY WE DIDN'T UPDATE THIS WEEK THAT WAS FUN RIGHT?" It's just taking up space, anyways.

I don't put any covers or fillers on my drunkduck pages.
I think they ruin the flow of the comic when someones trying to read them. I usually make a notation in the comments area or something instead.
If i had something really important I might post something, but I'd delete it with the next page.

I find when I'm reading a comic, especially when I'm trying to read a full archive the fillers annoy me a bit because I'll be reading away and all of a sudden BLAM random something... it ruins the mood a bit.

i wouldn't stop reading someones comic if they had fillers of course, unless it was more filler than comic.

If the filler is amusing, I count it. I hate concept sketches and scribblings in fillers though. The only time a filler annoys me to the extreme is when it's the latest update, especially on a comic that doesn't update very often. Not that we're discussing that particular subject.

Back on track, I count fillers UNLESS they're just sketches. Or full color splash page fillers...so annoying.

gurukitty
I don't put any covers or fillers on my drunkduck pages.

From an admin perspective, we LOVE covers!
A good cover gives us the perfect ready-made image for when we feature a comic.

-Better when the cover is properly representative of the comic: i.e. if the comic is black and white we like it better if the feature pic is black and white too, so we might not use a colour cover in that instance since we don't want to mislead people about what they'll see.

I count fillers, milestones, and "educational" pages as part of Magiversity. Everything else is just filler, I guess.