Opinions on Wattpad?

[ATRUNA]

As the title says, what's your opinion on Wattpad?

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

Lonely.

 

[RepresentingDesire]

It does exist.

 

[Deleted member 76176]

I've read at least one good book there. So they do exist.

 

[dummycake]

there's some good stuff, the interface isn't so bad, but the ads kill me

 

[Woolen_Monkey]

Never used it before ??

 

[HelloHound]

their tagging system is worse than useless but I like the sheer number available

 

[tiaf]

Like the infinite scrolling. They have embed YouTube videos. Have published there before scribblhub. Their search UI is utter garbage.

Don’t like how their mods can access and delete your drafts. Bug no-no.

 

[Representing_Tromba]

Mostly fanfic. Can't really use it for original stories.

 

[Corty]

Horrible discoverability.

 

[Rokuro-Sama]

I've written some works on there, but it's pretty hard to get any type of views over there.

 

[prognastat]

As a writer I have no clue as I've never posted there. As a reader it didn't seem to be to my taste. The target audience did not seem to be my kind of reader and though some of the novels might appeal to me it was a minority and finding them seemed a hassle.

 

[Conqueror_Quack]

Oversaturation, spam bots using old account email IDs, inappropriate advertisement in a place that has a lot of minors reading the stories, data breaches which have exposed user credentials, header which covers more area than the text itself.

 

[georgelee5786]

no one there speaks proper english

 

[RepresentingPride]

The ui is garbage, there no visibility for new stories, you can found ten times the same story upload by different people, if you didn't write a vampire teen romance story you will not have many view even if you reach the "top" in the tag ranking of your story.

 

[J_Chemist]

I avoid it.

 

[SRB]

A place of expression for those who don't know the sites better yet.

 

[Lysander_Works]

I have used Wattpad for a while. In fact it was the very first platform I started publishing on. Even with all I can compare it to, it isn't the worst platform that exists, but that's saying a lot, cause Wattpad is not really the place you go to for engagement. In short, their discoverability is trash, their UI system is ok, but not great and still lacks many features. Their "community" is nothing more than mods or other weirdos that somehow promote only because they are "selected" for awards for some arbitrary mess I didn't care to read into. There is no such thing as a forums page there, so you cannot interact with anybody there beyond direct messaging, not to mention this means beyond the lack of any chat room, this digs a bigger hole into being noticed on their platform. The most amount of views (just page views) I've had on my current project was somewhere around 4,000. On wattpad, the highest value is 10, and keep in mind I started there first. Another potential nail in the coffin, is that while they technically don't allow NSFW content on their platform (this meaning if the story is exclusively smut), plenty of people get a free pass while some do not. Very suspicious. Also, if you rate your content as mature, the only way to find that content is either by having the direct url link, or by searching for it from Wattpad's search engine (other search engines will not discover it under mature content setting). That's probably a deal breaker for some people.

In short, while it is not the worse, it has still become my least favorite platform out of the many I cross-post on.

Their search UI is utter garbage

Yep, it sure is.

Don’t like how their mods can access and delete your drafts. Big no-no.

Nani?! They can do that? That sounds like it would cause many more problems... Now that you mention it, I remembered in the back of my mind that there was some platform where drafts can be discoverable by other users (mods count in this opinion), and I was concerned because it also means A.I. scrubbing would also be capable of ripping right from those drafts. I guess Wattpad was the platform that did that, I just couldn't remember which one cause I had seen it so long ago and forgot. But yeah, this is news to me. I guess Project L will not be going on their platform after all. Thanks for letting me know.

Horrible discoverability.

Worst discovery I've ever seen. I just put in a support ticket there too, cause they're supposed to have a search filter for "show content by newest releases," and other people had theirs showing but mine which I had released recently enough was not visible (with mature setting turned off too). So now, anyone searching that will never even know I posted something unless I mention it outside of their own website. By the time they fix it, the filter will bury it too. I'm unhappy with their site, and grow less happy with them each day.

I've written some works on there, but it's pretty hard to get any type of views over there.

Yep. Not having a forum page and a broken search system will do that.

Oversaturation, spam bots using old account email IDs, inappropriate advertisement in a place that has a lot of minors reading the stories, data breaches which have exposed user credentials, header which covers more area than the text itself.

I would love to see the headlines on the data breaches. Was any of that recent? They're supposed to inform any active users if they had a data breach, and I haven't heard squat.

___

All in all, you will have better experiences on virtually any other platform, minus the few I removed from my own list (Geeke.app / neopload / Web Novel / Miraquill / Inkitt / Movellas | (and soon to be) Ritoria). (These few are not worth it).

The others that I know are better than wattpad and worth using are Royal Road, Scribblehub, Belletristica, Penana, and Booksie (classic).
There may be more I simply don't know about.

 

[ATRUNA]

Man, seems like it really isn't liked around here..

it isn't the worst platform that exists

now i'm curious, what is the worst platform that exists?

 

[RepresentingCaution]

They banned me. Their loss.