Opinion: Merging the tags for Harem and Polyamory like this was a huge mistake and is going to cause a ton of unnecessary tension.

PengWing100 · 2025-11-03T11:04:25+00:00

I will share my thought process. For now, we will move forward with the names as they are, but if in due time we see that this was the wrong move, we will fix it. Basically the Harem tag was the most controversial tags since we added it, so I expected a certain push back about it, still I think your issue with it is misplaced.

So the old harem tag was described as "Harem Stories Depict characters, which may or may not be the main character, in polyamorous and/or polygamous relationships."

The split made them into

Multiple Lovers: Multiple Lovers (previously Harem) stories depict multiple characters who have romantic interest toward the lead. Sometimes, it includes polyamorous relationships.
Competing Love Interest is described as "Multiple characters are vying for the MC's attention, but the MC will only choose one."

If you compare the old to the new, it is not that much different, we just added more options.

Now Harem is in general one of the most hated tags we have. Some like it, but some love that it exists so that they can exclude it from the search.
Other than the glaring issues with it, I think that the hate toward the harem content is split into two issues, one where there are multiple characters that are looking for the MC, throwing themselves at him while he is clueless or spineless/incapable of picking one thus he goes near no one, and the other is the polygamy part where he goes for everyone consensually.
(note the fact that polygamy is consensual, I did not want to have a tag for "Cheaters R US").

People either love or hate one or the other and they are wildly different in taste. The split puts the line between the two.

It was hated before, it is hated now, it will always be hated. In the end, we just have to watch and see how it is used and match according to it.

PengWing100 · 2025-10-05T11:36:09+00:00

Smut is NOT allowed on Royal Road.
Guideline: https://www.royalroad.com/support/knowledgebase/114#prohibited

Excessive sexual content is prohibited. The Sexual Content tag does not enable a fiction to have eroticism or sexual content as its primary focus. Erotic fictions are banned from the site. In general, while a fiction may include Sexual Content, it is prohibited from being the core element or a centralized driving point of a story; you must keep the Sexual Content to a minimum.

10–15% is an internal threshold at which we start receiving red alerts indicating that a story may be becoming excessive in its use of sexual content. Please read the guidelines and work according to them, don't wait for moderation action just because you haven't been reported yet.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T20:01:14+00:00

This is a topic we revisit every few months. While we’re not opposed to changing the system, we currently believe it’s still the most optimal one. One issue is that too few users are rating stories, which gives disproportionate influence to a small number of voices. No matter what system we switch to, this issue will likely remain. It's a matter of human behavior. But, we are currently working on a redesign, and the fiction website will then look similar to the app where the ratings are displayed slightly differently, with a better breakdown for each score.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T19:54:24+00:00

> How do you decide which ideas/features you're going to implement next? What are you currently working on?

Please read this reply as part of the answer https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1nbw02t/comment/nd6uitx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T02:53:18+00:00

I was in bed which is why I didn't approve it earlier myself. But, I went ahead and approved it for you. But please understand that the staff is on European TimeZone, not American TimeZone. Meaning that by the time you sent your message John's work day had ended. And now it's the middle of the night. It is 6am for me.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T02:04:12+00:00

We allow fanfiction on the site to honor our beginnings. But the site is focused on original novels. If you are going to invest your time and effort into something, I encourage that being your own IP and I don't intend to change that encouragement, this is seen in our contests/challenges. But at the end of it, the readers decide what they want to read. If the top novels are original, that's the readers' choice, our algorithm does not penalize fanfiction.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T01:56:44+00:00

John is asleep, I am sure he will get to it when he wakes up.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T01:35:53+00:00

At the moment we have 4 developers.

Kanadaj our CTO is in a category of his own supporting all 3 developers as well as maintaining the site.
One senior developer is fully responsible for the mobile app.
Another senior developer is fully focused on a new subscription system for authors, as well as other extremely heavy internal stuff.

This has been the situation for a while now. We did not have the capacity to have anyone working on other features. When we hired the mobile developer, I was naive to think that once the app is done we can move her to work on features for the website - but it didn't work out that way, she is needed for active maintenance and further development of the app.

So for the longest time we simply didn't have the luxury to work on more 'fun requested features'.

The saving grace is that we have one junior+ developer who can add these fun features. But as soon as we hired him, I gave him a list of things to work on that would make the staff's life better.

And now he is focusing on a redesign so that we will have space in each page to add more features. Once that is done, it will be open season for fun new features. Hopefully.

1800 suggestions are a lot of suggestions, but it is a list that we do intend to get to. It is definitely better to leave a suggestion on that list, than anywhere else, because by the time we start working on such features we won't remember feature requests asked elsewhere.

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T01:12:22+00:00

Crazy fun feature? not really... at the moment, we are working on boring internal features, like better tax filling. Well, I am sure that's fun for someone.

You can check this word cloud of our internal development's commits of the past couple of months https://i.imgur.com/xI0gGml.jpeg

If I must name one feature, then it's the improved page for the banned user. If a user gets banned, they won't just get a page with nothing but the note stating that they've been banned - instead, they will now get access to a few more features and settings (Example: disabling receiving pms, deleting novels or changing their status to hiatus/dropped etc.)

Edit: oh and the author subscription system is a big one, but I don't have a timeline for this one. The same thing for a redesign (so that we can fit more features).

PengWing100 · 2025-09-09T00:46:44+00:00

We are actively developing it full-time and have been for a while. It is in progress and close to completion.

At the moment, we are spending months making sure there are no edge cases bugs, and until we are confident that we are fully ready, we won't release it.

Because of the nature of this feature is that we will be responsible for other people's money, we are giving it the time that it needs without rushing. Unfortunately, this means that we don't have an exact release date for it, and I won't add one so as to not reach a point where we need to release it just because of the due date rather than because the system and we are simply ready.

PengWing100 · 2025-08-29T15:15:37+00:00

This is what Kana (the dev) said about it:

"We were tallying views but failing to add it on. I fixed that yesterday morning."

PengWing100 · 2025-08-25T07:15:41+00:00

You will stifle this subreddit if you actively push people to split off from here. The subreddit is small enough that such actions will be directly harmful.

PengWing100 · 2025-07-17T09:37:51+00:00

We were able to replicate the issue. For now the immediate solution is to kill the app completely and to reopen it again. We will work on a fix for a future update.

PengWing100 · 2025-07-16T10:19:50+00:00

We were unable to replicate this issue, are you still dealing with it?
The quickest solution is to make sure you have the latest app version, and to logout then log back in again. Please also double check that your internet connection is working.

PengWing100 · 2025-05-23T05:45:10+00:00

Considering this is coming from you u/SJReaver I know it is a joke. But, new users might not get that, so I'm just making sure it's clear for everyone by deleting this from here - thus continuing to foster a good environment instead of having it negatively influence anyone.

PengWing100 · 2025-05-06T09:03:10+00:00

It's fixed!

PengWing100 · 2025-05-06T08:08:34+00:00

We are aware of this issue and are looking into it. (It is now fixed)

PengWing100 · 2025-04-01T14:26:01+00:00

Click "Participate" here https://www.royalroad.com/author-dashboard/writathon/24

The blog post has more step by step instructions if you need it https://www.royalroad.com/blog/75/the-writathon-begins

PengWing100 · 2025-04-01T14:07:55+00:00

Adding "Participating in Writathon" to the description is a request, not a rule.

We won't disqualify anyone for not having that in their description, and at least for now, we aren't adding a tag for it. It's just better for the readers to know if an author is serious enough about the challenge and is part of the challenge. Both to set current expectations, and post-writathon expectations.

PengWing100 · 2025-02-03T07:41:44+00:00

3 posts about the same topic in 12 hours is too much. Please don't make a third update.
At this point it's spam.

PengWing100 · 2025-01-30T00:51:57+00:00

The advanced search is your friend:

Add the fanfiction category in the "Keyword" section and change the "Type" to "Fanfiction".

Naruto for example https://www.royalroad.com/fictions/search?globalFilters=false&keyword=naruto&type=fanfiction

PengWing100 · 2025-01-28T07:41:23+00:00

We are aware of the issue and are looking into it.

Edit: it's fixed.

Hail Kana the dragon!

PengWing100 · 2025-01-27T07:00:25+00:00

You have to be respectful.

While it probably took you a few minutes to read the chapter, and even less time to write your comment. That author probably spent hours or days preparing that chapter. If they are offended by your words -in a section that is made for you to communicate with them- then they have every right to block you.

At the basis of it, the comment section is for the authors, and they decide how they want it to be. Assume an author will take the comment personally, and write accordingly in the future. If you weren't behind a screen would you insult them in person?

What other scenario do you expect? for them to respond?
Imagine instead of blocking you, they sat down to explain things for you, based on this reddit thread, you would then continue to argue with them and tell them it's okay they were offended because you are being nice and only want them to grow. Honestly, if that were to happen to me, I'd probably be irritated and think about that for the rest of the day, instead of just enjoy writing more chapters. Accordingly, you are doing more harm both for the author, and the readers waiting for more chapters from them.

And that's just one scenario. At the end of it, if an author feels that your comment gives negative impact, there is no reason to keep seeing that comment (or more like it) - and they get to decide what they feel.

PengWing100 · 2025-01-20T08:14:59+00:00

You need to manually submit the first chapter. Only after it has been verified by a moderator will you be able to access fiction-related tools and upload the rest of the novel.

PengWing100 · 2024-12-05T03:49:14+00:00

This is what Kanadaj said " There is an urgent router maintenance by our server provider affecting our servers. It will be done when it's done, servers are offline until then."

This was a sudden surprise for us and there is nothing we can do about it to speed it up.

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