Am I being too sensitive or should I call this scanlation group out?

[kn4ll]

I've been in the exact same position as this with at least three groups, Arang Scans (now defunct), Spruce Tree, and more recently Taikutsu TL (Irozuku Monochrome and Yumene Connect). My suggestion would be just to ignore them and go on with releases honestly like you have.

My suspicion is either that they're
1) hiding chapters behind paywalls/patreons/coin systems (like a lot of new groups recently)
2) want more money before they scanlate further (like soseki scans)
3) don't want competition from other languages (I severely suspect this from Taikutsu TL, as they're a non-English group with tons of ads on their own reader)
4) wants to hoard series that might become popular (as was the issue with Arang Scans I think)

For Spruce Tree it was just a leader that bit over more than he could chew. And kind of self sabotaged his own groups with ridiculous demands from his crew. At least Osis is now finishing that manga after like four years or what it was.

 

[gomichandesu]

Scanny drama is always so funny to me. Shit or get off the pot, we're all illegally pirating manga here. Unless you have an official license none of ya have any more of a right to translate the series than the other. Threatening to drop 20 chapters just sounds like threatening me with a good time. I'd say it's your duty to the readers to make them follow through with that threat lol.

 

[kn4ll]

Scanny drama is always so funny to me. Shit or get off the pot, we're all illegally pirating manga here. Unless you have an official license none of ya have any more of a right to translate the series than the other. Threatening to drop 20 chapters just sounds like threatening me with a good time. I'd say it's your duty to the readers to make them follow through with that threat lol.

The times I've stepped down is because there's a group willing to work on the project that's doing a better job than me. But for some reason it's always been in bad faith, and they haven't done what they said they would. I'm beginning to think acting in bad faith is more the rule than the exception in scanlation honestly.
I sort of doubt most scanlators do it out of duty to the readers to be honest. Most of the time readers just act like self entitled children.

 

[gomichandesu]

The times I've stepped down is because there's a group willing to work on the project that's doing a better job than me. But for some reason it's always been in bad faith, and they haven't done what they said they would. I'm beginning to think acting in bad faith is more the rule than the exception in scanlation honestly.
I sort of doubt most scanlators do it out of duty to the readers to be honest. Most of the time readers just act like self entitled children.

If youre not doing it so it can be read whats the point of posting it then? Like I only scanslate shit I like, because I wanna read it and nobody else is picking it up. But I could always just... Not post it. But I do, bc why wouldn't I? Someone else without the bare minimum of nihongo like me can read it then. I already put in the work, might as well.

With the exception of those trying to profit off their illegal scans (which I don't support and laugh when they get mad someone else is putting it out for free), I just don't understand what the reasoning is to scanslate if not to allow people to read. Bc otherwise why bother going through the process to upload it. You can just read what you want and never release it to the world.

Again, I just don't understand scanny drama lol.

 

[Painasbread]

Again, I just don't understand scanny drama lol.

You've probably never been sniped by a group "trying to profit off their illegal scans" then, meaning they have a bigger group, a more advanced website, and can produce more chapters faster than your group.

So when those guys "[Threaten you] to drop 20 chapters[, it] just [doesn't] sounds like threatening me with a good time." it sounds more like looking down on you with their fast produced + lower quality + no heart put into it scanlations, saying: If you continue, you're wasting your time because most people don't care about quality, so they're already following our chapters. However much you might like what you're doing and on what you're working, suck it up because we want to profit off from the hype you guys just created, and after we say "don't worry, the story will be scanlated much faster, even though the quality will be a bit lower, it's better for everyone", we'll hold you hostages and not produce actually faster than you did before we overtake you.
So we just lost heart and a quality scanlation for what? Profit, disdain, and a factually worse scanlation effort and quality.

So yes, scanlation drama probably sucks whenever you're involved in them.

 

[gomichandesu]

You've probably never been sniped by a group "trying to profit off their illegal scans" then, meaning they have a bigger group, a more advanced website, and can produce more chapters faster than your group.

So when those guys "[Threaten you] to drop 20 chapters[, it] just [doesn't] sounds like threatening me with a good time." it sounds more like looking down on you with their fast produced + lower quality + no heart put into it scanlations, saying: If you continue, you're wasting your time because most people don't care about quality, so they're already following our chapters. However much you might like what you're doing and on what you're working, suck it up because we want to profit off from the hype you guys just created, and after we say "don't worry, the story will be scanlated much faster, even though the quality will be a bit lower, it's better for everyone", we'll hold you hostages and not produce actually faster than you did before we overtake you.
So we just lost heart and a quality scanlation for what? Profit, disdain, and a factually worse scanlation effort and quality.

So yes, scanlation drama probably sucks whenever you're involved in them.

Youre right, I've never been sniped, but the thing is I don't think sniping is a problem or a bad thing. If someone can do it faster, cool. Let them. I can still do my thing, I do projects because I actually enjoy them.

I don't get why these "high quality scans" get so upset, because they're also still free to put out their quality if they're actually that proud of it. I don't get why you don't just continue doing your own thing, because there are people who want that too. That's kinda the beauty of MD, you can have it all. You can have the speed reads if you're into that, and you can have the longer waited "quality" scans too, so long as they don't wimp out because they're in it for some other reason than just providing "quality" scans. The power is in the scanslators hands, they just have to continue doing the hobby they claim to like to do.

 

[Painasbread]

Youre right, I've never been sniped, but the thing is I don't think sniping is a problem or a bad thing. If someone can do it faster, cool. Let them. I can still do my thing, I do projects because I actually enjoy them.

I don't get why these "high quality scans" get so upset, because they're also still free to put out their quality if they're actually that proud of it. I don't get why you don't just continue doing your own thing, because there are people who want that too. That's kinda the beauty of MD, you can have it all. You can have the speed reads if you're into that, and you can have the longer waited "quality" scans too, so long as they don't wimp out because they're in it for some other reason than just providing "quality" scans. The power is in the scanslators hands, they just have to continue doing the hobby they claim to like to do.

Well, I can't scanlate on my own, but I wished to help put out good quality scans. My team members weren't that interested, so that's it. I'm just a bit sad we didn't continue just because some people in bad faith stopped "our" fun (at least mine).

"Good" quality is just a standard of mine I wish to keep up. I'm not going to force others to not enjoy scanlation if they want to do worse quality scans; I just won't enjoy working on it and won't enjoy reading it that much either.
Since I personally value quality more than speed, I'm affected when the general standard is speed rather than quality; that's just how it is for me. I will complain about it if it's something I'm working on for sure, but I won't bother to call out someone for their bad tl if my work is not involved in the situation.

I usually dislike reading bad quality scanlation and prefer to wait for a good group to pick up the series when it's possible. I don't care if others like to read bad quality scans; I personally don't. So it bothers me if we can only choose the worse alternative between two groups in the end.

 

[mangadexjp]

scanlators being childish pricks has always been so funny
the concept of sniping is ridiculous
none of you hold any rights to any manga, because you're pirating someone else's ip

if someone wants to scanlate 'your' manga, then they have full green light to do so
if someone else scanlating 'your' manga discourages you, then maybe don't scanlate?

isn't scanlation supposed to be done purely as a hobby?
do people in other hobbies stop working on their hobby piece, just because someone else worked on that piece?
for example, i'm yet to meet a hobbyist woodworker who stops working on a wooden statue of certain character, just because someone else already made one

scanlators should stop being childish
having more translation variations of the same manga is actually better for the reader
they can have an option to choose which one to read
isn't it the end goal for a scanlator? to bring the content of the manga to other people in a readable format?

unless you're doing it purely for profit and someone else scanlating 'your' manga hurts your earnings from donations/exposure you get
then i have only one message to people like you, you profiting off of someone else's ip does not give you any right to call 'dibs' or 'own' the 'right' to scanlate a certain manga

and readers should also stop enabling such behavior among scanlators
stop blocking/threatening to block/cancelling a scanlator group just because they 'sniped' someone else
in the end you're hurting yourselves only as a reader
you won't have several variations of translation to read from
there are tons of guano quality translations of various popular manga titles that are not being worked on by more competent scanlators because of this ridiculous concept of 'sniping'

moreover, you'll end up having with a lot of manga titles that are getting abandoned, because a scanlator gets bored/stops getting profit from it, while other scanlator was afraid to 'snipe' the title before and now forgot that manga even exists, so they won't pick it up