Combating Misinformation: Official Statement

[AgentKuga]

I still love and will continue using mangadex.
The drama has pretty much not reached me yet. I consider myself lucky.
The taking down of Eden’s Zero is the only series which actually affected me, and I’ll probably be going to aggregator sites for that.
The only time I will be upset is if Mangadex shuts down.
Great work Mangadex!

 

[PSRTExperience]

@Holo Is there any change or plan to change MD's platform and moderation structure in the foreseeable future?

 

[Invader_Retro]

@Intervencion Its cool what happened, happened it's ok
Nice discussion back to work for me 😅
New chapters to do etc 🚶‍♂️

 

[IncreaseSoup]

Since I'm on none of the various discords that would be linked with this issue I'm really thankful for you guys posting a fairly concise statement into one post. From the last thread there were several of the same points made but they were kinda lost in the sea of shitposting going on there. I'll just continue to throw my support behind MD for being such a non-intrusive site where I can read in peace while getting a good laugh out of chapter comments. I don't really have much to complain about when it comes to the comment moderation since whenever I saw it getting really heated there was always a mod to show up to take control, I can see it being hard on them to even know what might be going on in ever comment section given the sheer volume of stuff that gets uploaded all the time (A reason why reporting comments that you think are too much is always important).

I really hope the drama is over at this point but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part.

 

[Crimson95]

Sniping is kind of hard to call bad anyways. For example, there are some who have "Sniped" but because the first group Translating were using incorrect or Odd translations of stuff, making it hard to follow the story.

While i do feel like some of these Scanlation groups should learn to accept negative feedback better(every human is very sensitive in the current "climate" honestly), i will still be going to read some stories i have came to enjoy on their websites. And i hope they understand, i would have honestly never went to or discovered their sites if it was nor for MangaDex.

People will always find something to complain about, in most situations these are just "Trolls" and they enjoy any form of conflict they help produce. try and not give them the time of day, and there will be a lot less drama.(unless you want drama, in which case, go watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians or something...)

 

[Bentoki]

@Zephyrus I think the main complaint was your provoking and almost antagonistic attitude towards scanlators "you could fight back with your own credit page" or something to that description. From my standing, you're like 80% responsible for groups pulling, are you going to apologize for that?

 

[henkingu]

I believe that MD could have handled this situation a bit better but hey.. we are all humans and "mistakes" are often made.
and dude.. people really need to grow a thick skin, specially on the internet. Life is already hard enough, you don't need to make it worst for you by letting "toxic" messages affect you.

to all the groups that decided to leave

Spoiler

 

[ninjadork]

@TheOneWhoSighs I haven't spoken with you personally concerning this, so I'm not ascribing any of this to you.

But ever since this mess started, I have repeatedly asked multiple members of the now-gone scanlation groups their side of this miserable overly drawn out story. The only one who ever responded, a fellow by the screename of Mellow V2, not only did not answer my very specific question that I posed to him, but responded with a non-sequitur containing a blatant lie and some of the silliest nonsense I have ever seen outside of politics.

I am entirely willing to believe that Mangadex screwed something up, made a poor choice, or even is not being entirely truthful with what happened here. Both sides have been going at this like rabid cats, which is usually a reliable indicator that neither side is entirely clean. But that is increasingly becoming irrelevant because all the scanlators whose side of the story I want to hear (and have managed pose a question to, prior to you) have spoken and acted like some of the most pedantic, petty, dishonest children to ever touch a keyboard.

I still have no idea what JB is an acronym for, much less why some of you are up in arms about Mangadex redirecting comments to it. I still have no idea what you scanlators consider so bad about going legit. I still have no examples of what you scanlators (or at least you personally, since I don't expect you to speak for others w/o their permission) consider to be "toxic comments" from the Mangadex posters.

If you could give me a clear answer to these questions without all the vitriol and spin, I would defend you (as in you personally) on this website.

 

[Acolytus]

@Bentoki The more I hear, the more I believe those scanlators need thicker skin.

If this sort of stuff makes them react like that they are never gonna make it IRL.

 

[TetraSky]

*look at the lists of manga that got cleared of chapters*

... And nothing of value was lost. So many trashy isekai...

Quite frankly, the fact they threw a tantrum like that by pretending to be holier than thou when they are really just filthy pirates like the rest of us... is laughable. Even more so when they are making money with their donation/patreon off that pirated content.

 

[Kimzark]

the only reason i would like to know what groups have left, would be to know what series i wont get to see updated on MD anymore and could go find them somewhere else... i dont think i can go through my nearly infinite pages of mangas to find which ones are missing (besides JB because i always felt it was stupid them have 14 days delay on bokutachi and kaguya, and i easily found about them missing)... in order to not cause extra unnecessary drama and witch hunting, i would appreciate if someone could DM me who actually left so i can keep up with the missing series elsewhere.

 

[Plykiya]

@Kimzark Posted a google doc with that info on page 3: https://mangadex.org/thread/93392/3/#post_769453

 

[Intervencion]

@ninjadork

JB stands for Jaimini's Box. They're Mangastream competitor.

 

[Kimzark]

ohh thanks @plykiya that's helpful ^^ havent seen it...

 

[ShinobuOshino]

"you could fight back with your own credit page" kakaka, that's an awesome answer.

@Bentoki
On a more serious note, afterward they did change the rules to allow that kind of conversation to happen, so it should be more than enough as an apology/sign to have understood the mistake/trying to fix things. Actions should be valued more than just words.

 

[TheOneWhoSighs]

@ninjadork

Well, lets start from the top.

JB is as acronym for Jaimini's Box

much less why some of you are up in arms about Mangadex redirecting comments to it

I'm personally up in arms about it, because I don't believe that's the behavior that a "scanlator friendly" "neutral" platform should engage in.

If you did some serious thinking. I don't believe you could think of another platform in which, when someone leaves it, the platform owners tell people to take any complaints to the person that left.

Generally, a neutral platform lets the community chat about it freely, and bans any that get hateful or rude. In order to not take a stance, you basically have to not point at the ones involved. If you point at the ones involved, direct them to use another form of social media to put their criticisms though, then you are no longer neutral. Especially when you have a much larger user base, that is about as loyal as an Apple fan.

I still have no idea what you scanlators consider so bad about going legit.

To go legit, the platform has to ditch them. It's without a shadow of a doubt that the platform would have to abandon the scanlators. Which ultimately means abandoning most of the readers. Because you're only going to be able to keep so much of it on your site. Only so much of it will be legal.

This is something that both CrunchyRoll and Fakku pulled. And it rightfully angered the communities at the time.

And unlike Holo's saying. You don't need Elon Musk money. You just have to dump what you can't license, and put ads on. The traffic would rapidly decrease, but you'd have enough to make a very pretty penny in the mean time.

I still have no examples of what you scanlators (or at least you personally, since I don't expect you to speak for others w/o their permission) consider to be "toxic comments" from the Mangadex posters.

Yuno posted a decent example on the JB discord.

Spoiler

 

[Intervencion]

That's not toxic though.

 

[ichigoteguz]

I had honestly stopped reading manga some years ago, it had become too much of a hassle, downloading would get messy after a couple hundred series and reading online was a huge malware and ad hazard, so I honestly just stuck to anime and games, MangaDex changed that, honestly, if I can't read it here, I probably won't read it at all, such a shame for there to be such drama, but alas, tis human nature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , I for one love what MangaDex has done and has been doing, and while I've only skimmed over the drama (cause ain't nobody got time fo dat, I honestly don't understand this current year trend of actively looking for things you hate instead of focusing on what you enjoy, but if you enjoy your own misery, then have at it, just leave the rest of us out of it), I overall agree with how I've seen MD handle things, I think the rules are fair as rules are necessary for order, but you can't expect the staff to micro-manage every single troublesome user, and blanketed, wide spectrum censorship of speech is never the answer, we the users as well have been given the tools necessary to manage our own experience and escalate to the mods when we think it's necessary (user blocking and reporting). I put in an order for 5 mouse pads, they'll be gifts to all my friends who also deeply enjoy MangaDex as much as I do, I plan to keep supporting when and how I can to the best of my ability because MangaDex has honestly done a spectacular job, otsukaresama deshita mina-san! Long live MD, and may the drama stay in the manga plot and not the community.

@Zephyrus , sorry for the random tag, I just want to make sure the staff knows that I genuinely appreciate the effort you all put in to running this site and all it entails.

 

[kp114330]

This drama shit is a pain in the ass.

As a reader I liked mangadex and batoto as they credited scanlators and were places where I could read manga without going to aggregator sites. All the scanlating teams are doing by pulling out is breaking up the manga community.

Thank you mangadex staff for taking an initiative to clarify readers on why they they are unable to see certain chapters and discuss hat lead to all of this.

 

[Dysisa]

For the most part I think this is a good post that clarifies a lot of things, kudos for taking the time to write it. If I had to nitpick one thing, then it'd be in the part re: toxicity where you state your rules are designed to make this place better than MAL or 4chan (a commendable goal I am all for), but the above examples of accepted comments include low quality non-constructive garbage like "your translation sucks" as an acceptable comment. Like c'mon, if that's the level you're okay with then you're never gonna see this community be any better than the MAL forums or whatever other hellpit. You seem like you've got a good head on your shoulders though, so I'm sure you fully realize this and hopefully only used that as a convenient example.

All in all though, keep up the good work. 🤗