Combating Misinformation: Official Statement

[kenx]

@PSRTExperience

Spoiler

Oh boy, will that comparison (as accurate as it is ina sense) spark another lenghty "discussion"? Find out in this page!

 

[Dor1tos]

@MisakaxMisaka
That series, along with every WSJ series JB puts out, is available free on Mangaplus the same day it releases in Japan.

 

[Arashi89]

@ObserverOfTime Lots of groups here have delays, but when you go look at their comment pages you see nothing but appreciation and support for what they do. Do you know why so many people here were so angry at Jaimini's Box? Because they set a two weeks long delay for their releases, which is:

1) A violation of the rules of this site, which stated that the maximum delay should be only 7 days, and Holo admitted that he bent the rule just so JB could agree to post their releases here.
2) A blatant attempt to redirect readers to their site and milk their clicks for all their worth, while ensuring that MangaDex would see none of that engagement.

And on top of all this undeserved privileges, now they started a witch hunt with the explicit purpose to destroy this site's reputation, starting a general panic that every single scanlator will pull their releases from here, and hiding behind anonymous accounts to fan the flames on reddit and 4chan. And all of this while claiming that MangaDex didn't act mature enough.

You think we are too angry? I say we are too fucking nice.

 

[ObserverOfTime]

@PTRB I'm not making a single dime out of scanlation, so I can assure you that my goal is not to profit. I simply don't like MangaDex and would rather not have my group's releases here.

@KB1011 I started the group along with 3 other members of a certain Discord server because we all loved the SciADV franchise. So, we decided to start translating its manga adaptations for us and all the other SciADV fans out there to enjoy. That was back when Batoto was a thing. When Batoto died, we figured we should make our own site, which we did. At the same time, MD launched and some users uploaded our releases here. Thereafter, many incidents caused me to dislike and often antagonise MD, until I decided to remove those releases. I was originally going to do that when there was a better alternative aggregator, but I reckoned that this Mangadexit was a good chance to do so. This decision, along with some admittedly excessive remarks of mine, has led many a user to come after me with pitchforks.

@0xDEAD No, it's not characteristic of MD users. But because MD is a centralised service and—at the moment—a monopoly, it makes it easier for dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people to attack as a mob.

 

[0xDEAD]

@brykanst Noooo! I actually enjoy his/her presence as theres an actual effort to communicate and dialog on the matter.

@ObserverOfTime Ces't la vie. Things are often a mix of good and bad, one can only hope that the good outweighs the bad.

 

[Ephemeralis]

I'm not sure why SL groups are getting up in arms about their readers getting angry about their continued efforts to make it as hard as possible to read their works on a platform that isn't plastered with either bloatware ads or constant begging for donations. Or for instituting completely arbitrary delays in an effort to lure people to their own sites, where they instead try to ply for said "donations" instead.

Groups that do such things are no better than the highly predatory owners of the larger manga aggregators, they're just flavoring themselves differently.

MD has been the only platform worthy of any degree of respect from the community in a long time now - from it's well-documented efforts alone to literally bend over backwards to accommodate SL whims, bar their frankly asinine requests to 'moderate' the opinions of MD's users when said groups are rightfully called out for their practices. Granted, this 'rightful' calling out is a significant majority of the complaints - many users are just impatient assholes who are essentially chomping at the bit of people who are offering them content to digest. Perhaps there is some merit in shaping future moderation policy to handle these sorts of things.

For everything else however, this SL exodus does nothing but make it significantly harder for the overwhelming share of people in this community to engage with the content they love. It puts more share into the SL's official sites and subjects more people to the same distasteful begging for income from the intellectual property of other people's work.

JB's apparent rationale for this exodus is particularly reprehensible, especially in light of all the criticism towards MD staff for their dreams of going 'legit', as if trying to create a full-featured and fair platform for many of these groups to attempt to legitimize and extend the reach of their work to the masses is somehow a bad thing. I suppose it is a bad thing if all you care about is milking donation money from your readers.

 

[Confused]

well this was very clear and professional.

 

[kenx]

@Ephemeralis
Shh, the less they know the better.

 

[PTRB]

@ObserverOfTime I assume you have not signed the statement in the OG thread because I don't see your name or the name of either of the groups you are a part of in the signature section, so I am not referring to you or your groups.

 

[ss4chris]

I need a TLDR. that was too complicated for me.

So all the manga associated with the scanlators who wanted to leave are not on here anymore. I got that part at least.

 

[JustNatsuki]

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

We have a mess still going down here in the states and it's been going on for three whole years, here's to hoping this doesn't go that long.

 

[PSRTExperience]

We have a mess still going down here in the states and it's been going on for three whole years, here's to hoping this doesn't go that long.

I wish. This has been extremely entertaining to read so far. Much more so than some series on this site even.

Actually teach me mangadex sensei should have an issue regarding this. It'll be hillarious

 

[KB1011]

@ObserverOfTime

So you technically go under the second scenario I described earlier (scanlating because you like doing it). So, can you tell me what MD did to offend you so much that you would remove your chapters, despite having accomplished your initial objective of releasing the chapters to fellow fans?

 

[ObserverOfTime]

@PTRB I honestly wanted to, but the thread got locked.

@brykanst You're right, maybe I should stop following this thread. I'll go back to counting how many times I've been downvoted on Reddit by this minority of users over the past 2 days simply for going against MD. Currently sitting at 150. Let's make it to 200, shall we?

 

[kenx]

A manga about MD shenanigans would be fun to see.

 

[YosepRA]

Thanks for clarifying MangaDex. For a moment I thought more SLs are going to leave.

@ss4chris
Basically money.

 

[moozooh]

@Shyning
Thanks. Apparently I'm not following pretty much any of them nor their content preferences, save for like 3 or 4 series JB are doing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

From what I gather, I guess it's partly MD's admins' fault for pushing the "going legit" talk to the point where some people really started taking it seriously; it really should have been more obvious that if there's a politically charged message, however facetious, it's best not to flaunt it carelessly. But maybe their departure is a good thing in the long term; it seems some of the groups weren't happy anyway and were just waiting for a good excuse to take off. Better rip that band-aid off sooner.

@valconius
I needed that to know which MD links I had given before the drama may have been broken since (either "404" kind of broken or "it's not there anymore"). Apparently, none—except for Kokou no Hito which was pulled by a different group much earlier.

 

[Invader_Retro]

@NeoDark No you raise the best point out of all this drama that needs to be dealt with xD

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.

@Holo this has been the most concerning point and glad there at least few that think this way
@Zephyrus This goes back to what you said about toxicity

 

[valconius]

@moozooh oh shit you're correct fuck god dammit god fuck not a massive data loss again!

Sunovabitch are the comment threads being deleted too? Oh god no please keep the comment threads, just make the chapters unaccessible that is what i miss most from batoto. Also i like being able to see chapters marked as "read" was that data deleted also?!

@holo @zephyrus @whoever-will-listen-plz-dont-delete-data

 

[kenx]

@ss4chris
Face. MD didn't give them any and now some scanlator groups are retiring. They will regret not exterminating MD by the roots.

Spoiler

Just money, as always. Any problem you don't understand why? Probably money.