Neptune Aquatics

Poll- Keep or remove Tapatalk integration?

Should we remove or keep Tapatalk (TT) integration?


  • Total voters
    42

JVU

President
BOD
Our site, bareefers.org, has a plug-in installed to integrate with Tapatalk. Tapatalk is a 3rd-party app that is intended to improve people’s experiences accessing forums, especially for people who access many forums.

In the past there were some distinct advantages to using Tapatalk over accessing forum websites directly, like ease of uploading images, ease of getting alerts, new posts feed, username/password management, and other technical improvements. When we upgraded the BAR site last year, we improved it in many important ways, and arguably none of these features are better on Tapatalk than direct access on bareefers.org now. Many of us who have been around for a few years and used to use Tapatalk have ditched it.

There are also some specific reasons why having Tapatalk integrated with our site is not good, even for people who don’t use it:
  • Privacy/Security- There has been discussion that the integration exposes to Tapatalk members’ username, password, personal account details, interactions with other members across multiple sites, viewing history, sites visited before and after using. Unfortunately Tapatalk earned a not-stellar reputation a couple years ago with some breaches of trust with this data, the details of which I don’t personally understand well but sound bad enough to be of concern.
  • Privacy Policy- Our privacy policy says we don’t share any information with outside parties, and it is true that we are not actively sharing any data with Tapatalk. But it could be argued that since Tapatalk can learn a lot of personal info about our members even without our active participation, that we should be disclosing this if we keep it. I don’t know how to word this in a revised Privacy Policy, and quite frankly I’d rather not have to.
  • Annoying- Many times when someone accesses our site, including newcomers, the integration triggers a hard-stop popup that suggests that they access through Tapatalk, including encouraging downloading the app (which itself may be a security risk, as above).
  • Breaks BAR features- There are several Xenforo BAR site features that are useful, expected, and community-building that Tapatalk breaks when people access through their app. Polls, signature lines (which often have links to tank journals and people’s names), and mention calls vs @ calls when you want to alert a member. I remember when I was new and I was using Tapatalk a lot of the time I had no idea what people were talking about when they referenced polls or other things hidden by Tapatalk. I notice that it still comes up frequently on here that someone has some confusion or a poor experience because of this.

For those of you who use Tapatalk and haven’t tried accessing BAR directly through the website recently, please give it a try for a few days and see what you think. Feel free to ask questions about how to do whatever is unfamiliar.

At the upcoming Board meeting, I’d like to discuss removing the Tapatalk integration, like many other forums have done, including reef2reef. This would resolve the above problems, but would create a new problem of upsetting our members who prefer to use Tapatalk since they wouldn’t be able to anymore. Please answer the poll according to how you personally feel about your use, not how you feel about how it will affect others. Of course that is a huge consideration, but we need to find out how people feel about it as individuals first.

Note to Tapatalk users: Please access this page through the site (https://www.bareefers.org/forum/threads/poll-keep-or-remove-tapatalk-integration.26987/) so you can vote in the poll (this is getting too meta).
 
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Suggesting that, since the BOD meeting is rapidly approaching and this has the potential to be a pretty significant impact on a number of users, this be stickied/featured on the front page for visibility.
 
Suggesting that, since the BOD meeting is rapidly approaching and this has the potential to be a pretty significant impact on a number of users, this be stickied/featured on the front page for visibility.
I thought about that, but we can only have 1 featured thread at a time and right now the meeting itself is featured. I did put a link to this thread in that featured thread just now.

Also if we get some discussion going here, it will keep this thread up high and visible. If not, I’ll bump it every once in a while for people.

And just to be clear, the point of the poll is to let us (Board and members) know how people feel about it so that we can have an informed discussion at the Board meeting. It is NOT a binding vote to determine whether or not we will keep or remove it. So discussion here would also be helpful.
 
Maybe in place of the License to Krill add our webmaster could put an image with our next important event, the Tapatalk vote reminder, etc? I just tried out the webpage on my phone to see if I could live without Tapatalk and wondered why we’re still flying ads for closed shops?
 
I voted strongly for removing TT due to privacy concerns. I submitted a CCPA information download request to see exactly what information they have on me as a user who uses BAR in a browser. Im not too worried about my info being sold to advertisers when it’s used to pay for a service I benefit from, but what value is tapatalk adding in exchange for selling my info to marine depot to send me more fish related ads. lol

I found some threads from other hobby forums switching away from TT and none of them point at any glaring privacy issue but it sounds like TT limits some functionality and then forces their app pop up. It’s a win-lose situation where TT is the winner.

With that said, I wouldn’t want to lose out on members over this. but I encourage the tapatalk fans to give mobile a shot it works well!
 
Something to think about, so a meeting doesn't go on forever if you have concerns about a topic address those concerns with a member of the BoD so that all the pros and cons, worries/concerns can be discussed in a more organized way where any input from members can be held to what is talked about, also helps a 90 minute meeting from turning into a 900 minute meeting :D (not that would happen)

So basically what Max has done here is great, and this concern can be ear marked as part of the formal discussion. Also the anonymous suggestion that @Meshmez deals with would work too if you feel that you don't want to publicly speak up about it for any reason, although I'm not exactly sure how one does that...he does though.
 
Maybe in place of the License to Krill add our webmaster could put an image with our next important event, the Tapatalk vote reminder, etc? I just tried out the webpage on my phone to see if I could live without Tapatalk and wondered why we’re still flying ads for closed shops?
We’ve been bringing up the outdated banners many times for over a year. With our sponsorship/partnership reset now it seems like the perfect time to update those. But it’s a volunteer activity to work on stuff like that, and as far as I know nobody else can help. You aren’t the first one to see it and be annoyed.

I don’t think it would be possible to have events as a banner in the rotation without significant hassle of making and coding new banners every month (not going to happen unless someone is volunteering for it).

But yeah I think there should be space for more than one featured thread so that we could have events, polls, maybe tank of the month, etc featured prominently. Right now only 1 featured thread at a time.
 
@Chromis @JVU
Deleting, changing, and adding banners is very easy.
I need a LINK to an image.
I need a conversation, asking for the change.
It then takes less time than to write this post.

But do not assume I happen to see requests in threads, or happen to know a sponsor is out of business.
 
Looks like there are only THREE members that feel strongly about keeping Tapatalk. I'm a bit surprised by this given some of the feedback I had seen in the past....I would've expected many more.
 
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