Combating Misinformation: Official Statement

[Jesotku]

I'm still genuinely confused about this whole situation, why can't we all just read manga and be happy again? Why do they have to pull peoples entertainment away? Did this all become about profit and everyones forgotten why they scanlate and upload chapters? 😔

 

[Jayrad207]

Thanks for taking the time to address this, guys. Also, thanks for working so hard for this site. IMHO, mangadex is the most reliable one out there, and least likely to give anyone a virus, and me being the paranoid little sh!t I am, that's pretty comforting. It really is a shame that y'all get as much hate as you do.

 

[bk3k]

@TheOneWhoSighs

The reverse situation requires a much larger entity to kick a much smaller entity off its platform. That is an act of aggression.

Aggression? That's hilariously wrong.
1. Being "larger" (more visitors to their page) is irrelevant.
2. MD isn't required to host anyone's content in the first place. Even so I'm talking theoretically since MD never actually kicked them off.
3. MD hasn't "abused" JB in any way. They allowed them to upload their content when they wanted to. They removed it when asked (now more than once). They enforced the (silly long) release delay JB wanted.
4. If JB being removed from MD hurts JB... well that's happened twice now - both times was JB's decision.

You go a long way with logic pretzels to never admit someone else has a point. Is it really so hard for you to consider the possibility of you being wrong? Or are you just trolling? I have to consider that a likely scenario at this point.

The non-reverse situations requires a much smaller entity to look at the bigger one and go "Can you not upload our content". "Can you not upload our content"

MD never "uploaded" JB's content. It was uploaded to MD by JB.

In any case - troll or semi-serious - you aren't being remotely reasonable in your expectations that any entity shouldn't have to shoulder the consequences of THEIR OWN DECISIONS, and furthermore expecting another entity to do so in place of the entity which made the decision.

Or you could look at it this way - if I quit a job and later a customer (of that business) asks why I don't work there anymore - they'd probably say "You'd have to ask him why he quit" since they never made the decision to fire me. It is 100% on me. They shouldn't have to deal with an angry customer who thinks I was fired (perhaps unjustly). That's absolutely reasonable and self-evidently justified on their part.

 

[gonn92]

@ObserverOfTime that also apply to most of the internet (and world) or are you saying that the comment section in their pages is better because you should check merakis gudao master then. also not saying its wrong to cut the ¨nose¨ just saying that eventually you sre going to run out of body parts to purge.

 

[PTRB]

Well, here we go.

Really makes me think the Chinese are going about things the right way. Why give democracy, freedom, or transparency to those you 'rule' over if all you are going to get in return is spit in your face and an angry mob at your doorstep? Why not just screw over everyone you can to make as much money as possible? Why should MD NOT be the next Kissmanga? It would save them a whole lot more time and make them a whole lot more money. It would save them the headache of having to make 2000-word essays kowtowing to idiot readers and even more idiotic scanlators who have there panties in a twist complaining over 'muh rights' and 'muh donations' in an illegal industry created because millions of degenerates weren't lucky enough to be born in the land of moonrunes.

What are these groups' end goal exactly (other than profit, which is obvious)? I've read over OP's message in the 'rose-colored glasses' _{do these people actually read what they write? pretentious a-holes} thread about 10 times, and I'm not sure there is a single tangible complaint in there. Because they get "targeted hate" from members? Is me creating this message "targeted hate?" What are you on about? Sounds like an excuse, especially after Zephyrus' statement explaining that the MD staff had reached out saying they would lock chapter discussions and group pages if a scanlator wishes for it. "MD had become a breeding ground for this hate," yeah, especially after this dumb stunt, who the hell would respect you now? Oh wait, no, the real complaint is "MD is going to be the next Fakku and throw readers under the bus." _{yeah, that's likely and not an excuse} ...OH? Like you did by pulling all your stuff off the site and making us use your shitty websites or ad-ridden agitators in order to read your translations? Good one, I appreciate it! Your move was truly made in the interest of readers like myself, and totally not out of greed, spite, or immaturity! Thanks!

Spoiler

Fuck you.

 

[dankdevice]

@ObserverOfTime how many views did each chapter of love is war have? 20,000? 30,000? how many people are sending angry messages to JB? 100? 200? 500? even if im being liberal in my guesses that's 5% of the viewership being hostile or toxic, which sounds about right to me.

welcome to the internet my dude, there's plenty of shit people on it. that shouldn't be an excuse but it's the reality of the situation.

 

[flavorful]

@theonewhosighs
>Idk who you are, but imagine thousands upon thousands of angry people coming to you and complaining about your decision.

If I made a really stupid decision that pissed off thousands of angry people and they complained why would I suddenly be exempt from that? They made their bed, they can lie in it. This is the internet, and if they don't like people disagreeing with their decisions they can turn off the screen and go outside or something. It's the lame cyberbullying argument all over again.

Edited for typos.

 

[Avalanche]

Quite a bit late to the party, but after seeing that list of titles I just have to laugh. Hatigarm did one single chapter of Biorg Trinity, ch16 to 46 were all done by Timeless Scans.

 

[dill4u]

Sniping will be a problem if it's done by individual.
A single person vs a big scanlation group.
That individual can act as arrogant as he wants and nobody can and want to stop that. So I believe any scanlation projects should always be handled by group (of at least 3 people maybe?). Let them handle the dispute between groups and do not let any individuals upload their scanlation project.

and..
MD being legitimate all-in-one centralized free-ads world-wide manga empire is hard but possible. Buying licences for each manga is unnecessary. MD has to convince licence holders and has to make "pay per view" contract deals instead so that MD pays no money for manga that have little or no view.

 

[ObserverOfTime]

@gonn92 I don't think I actually read any series from the other groups that pulled out. If I do read any of them, it's via Tachiyomi/Madokami so I haven't seen their comment sections. KissManga was the one site that had nice comment sections before it turned into a cesspool. Although, it's not specifically the comment sections that I dislike, but the behaviour of the users in general.
• X has a delay? How dare they make me wait! SHOOT THEM!
• Y is not posting on MD? How dare they make me visit their site! SHOOT THEM!
• Z is saying anything remotely negative about MD? How dare they criticise this great site! SHOOT THEM!

Spoiler

MUST. PURGE. ALL. BODY. PARTS.

 

[KB1011]

@ObserverOfTime

I do agree that many, if not most of the manga readers community is cancerous. The question here is why are you serving them/scanlating manga, and what are your priorities?

I can imagine multiple reasons for someone to become a scanlator. For example, some would do it for their egos, as in "Wow, look at all these people reading and enjoying something I worked in". In this scenario, you're forced to suck up to your readers to keep them satisfied. In this scenario, pulling out of mangadex is never a good option.

In my case, I do it mostly because I like what I'm doing. Therefore, I wouldn't give a flying fuck about angry readers, nor would I really care about belonging to a certain team. I work on a certain manga because I like it. If needed, I would join the team working on it and help them or start a joint with them. Much like the previous scenario, I wouldn't pull out of mangadex because why even bother? I translated a chapter and now I'm satisfied.

One more scenario, which I find quite hard to imagine, is doing it for money. Can a relatively big team actually earn more money than they spend on raws/servers? That doesn't sound likely, but this is the only scenario where I believe the scanlators to have a good reason to pull out of mangadex.

Please let me know if you can see the situation from a different point of view.

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

Honestly I'm still disappointed by the groups decisions

From champion scans I lost 12 series
Jaimine I lost a shit ton close to 20 series alone and a very popular series as well
https://mangadex.org/title/19531/the-promised-neverland

I'm at a lost

 

[0xDEAD]

@ObserverOfTime Are any of those comments something characteristic of MD users? Thats just people being entitled, as they have always been. Some manage to grow up and understand they are not entitled to anything, others don't. I don't think MD can change that, nor that it is it's place to do so. It just tries to make the experience of publishing and reading enjoyable, not of interacting with other human beings. As for criticism, MD has generally been really open to receiving clear criticism, and trying to learn and adapt to it.

@MisakaxMisaka You didn't lose them, you can still go to their site and read it.

 

[rizic1]

@0xDEAD Some of the scan groups that left dont even have sites. So what then?

 

[Jinbou]

In order to do that, we would need to raise *hundreds of millions of dollars* and in addition get every single Japanese/Korean/Chinese publisher to agree to let their content be hosted alongside that of their competitors. The idea of us going legit and remaining what we are is laughable. We have no interest in going legit in any other form than this silly pipe dream of ours. It's a recurring meme on our Discord and we're not shy about talking about it if it's brought up. I myself like to refer to all the yachts I'm going to buy when we go legit.

Of course, surely you know Japanese publishers' stance on scanlations, coming to terms with them all is beyond impossible, anyone with a brain will know there is 0 chance Mangadex can go legit without removing the majority of their library. So when all of the staff says "yeah we want to go legit" the only explanations I could think of was:
1- you're all delusional idiots (most likely wrong)
2- it's half truth, you will be okay with going legit if you get an offer even if it means getting rid of your library (which is a scary thought because I have already been hurt by other sites doing the same thing)

And since I know 1 is not true, the only conclusion I could think of was 2.

Apparently you're saying it was neither, rather "you were memeing/dreaming." Which, it didn't sound like that in that thread.

Anyway, I'm not completely convinced but there is no way for me to know what the staff's real motives are, time will tell I guess. For the time being I would advise two things to the staff:

1- Don't make careless comments on a drama thread like that. When the first 3-4 replies from the staff to that thread are just "yes, we do want to go legit" and no proper explanation, how can I know this is not a serious plan? Not everyone knows you that well or knows about your discord/memes.

2-

Let me be clear that we have no issue with groups utilizing ads or asking for donations. We understand that servers and raws need to be paid for. Some groups even opt to pay their translators. Scanlation isn't free and isn't always cheap depending on how big your operation is.

If you really understand this, don't talk like having patreons or asking for donations is a bad thing. Asking for donations is, and has always been, a normal thing for scanlation groups, and you explained the reason yourself here. The staff comments on the previous thread were emphasizing that those groups are taking donations, which is completely irrelevant, like it makes their post invalid somehow. I'm not sure if you were trying to change the subject or what that was about, but it was a pretty ugly sight.

Overall, saying "yes we do want to go legit. And these guys are accepting donations, so they are obviously bad!" instead of giving a proper explanation was the worst reply you could possibly give to that post. I was neutral about it when I initially saw the drama as I didn't want to jump to conclusions, but your replies did make me lose some respect to some of the staff.

 

[0xDEAD]

@rizic1 Use a less savory aggregator site, or attempt to get into direct contact with the group to determine what their distribution channels are.

@Jinbou It literally is reason one. MD just doesn't care if its an idiot for having a pipe-dream. As for the patreons thing, that was a snarky reply to the fact that the groups were insinuating that MD was doing it for the money and simply putting up a front when it says it cares about its community. At least, _I_ don't think any of them have a _real_ problem with it.

 

[kenx]

@Jesotku
Times change, m'boy(?). 'Tis inevitable. The needs defeat the fun.
@KB1011
Where has time gone? I feel like new big scanlator groups are more motivated by money.

Spoiler

Won't condemn anyone, though, since money is what makes the world go round.

 

[brykanst]

@ObserverOfTime the opinion you seem to have on a semi vocal minority of readers leads me to believe you would be better off not on the internet in general let alone on this site... it would be in your interest to stop even following this thread and just walk away

 

[PSRTExperience]

@ObserverOfTime While I agree with your opinions regarding the behaviors you mentioned and thinks it's pretty annoying in fact when I go to the comment wanting to read other's review of a manga or opinion on a development only to find those type of comment, their behaviors, in my opinion, is justified.

You can't be a prostitute and refuse to do blowjob because it hurt your damn ego, then call authorities on the customers when they call you out for it or go to the guy who opened up shop across the street who provide essentially the same services but with blowjob included in the package and throw a fit when they don't abide to your wishes.

People will always find something to complains presented with even the slightest of inconvenience, especially when it's involving something with alternative available. You are free to like or dislike them of course, and even denied service to those people, which is also justified.

 

[NeoDark]

Wow. I can't believe we're 2 weeks in and we still have this mess going on.

For the most part I agree with most of MangaDex's decisions and their neutral stance. The only one that I'm not a big fan of is the decision about not having rules about credit/extra pages being held to the same guidelines as the community. I get you're trying to be neutral and don't want to do what other sites are doing where they make people change their releases but I think there's a difference between removing a credit page or alternating it completely and keeping some standards that people can abide by. I feel like for the most part, if you made a poll asking the community (or maybe just the scanlators) whether they think if those pages should be held to the same standards as the community guidelines that everyone else abides by, I'm pretty sure most people would agree and be ok with it. You might say it's a slippery slope but I disagree. For the most part your rules have worked and have kept drama and trolling out and they're simple because it boils down to "don't be a dick". If it's something that you normally wouldn't be ok with in the forums, I don't see why it should be ok to post in the credits/extra pages. It'll only start conflicts for things that no longer even are about the chapters anymore as we see users take sides.

In fact, I think instead of just nipping the bud where it started, you are now going down a more slippery path by allowing the discussion to be involving those pages so now all someone needs is a credit page to start up a conflict that would have otherwise not have been ok or been allowed elsewhere. This is why I really hope you guys will revisit and reconsider this. As someone that loves reading comments here and there for chapters, I really would wish the comments pertained towards the chapters themselves rather than something else due to a loophole. I feel like it defeats the purpose for a comment section for each chapter if the comments were no longer even about that chapter. On top of that, it now creates more work for you guys because now you have to monitor the chapter comments even more tightly now if something does stir up.

Anyways that's just my opinion. I'm not a scanlator. I'm just here to enjoy the scanlations and reading other people's love for the stories they bring so maybe I could be wrong but I don't think it would hurt if you guys did hold a poll or something amongst just the scanlators to see if they feel the same.

Anyways keep up the great job you guys have been doing and I hope to see this place continue to improve.