Expanded rules for upload based trolling :rejected:

[deltarayedge]

Can't see the topic in the first 5 suggestion pages, and there's no search, so...

Would like to see some new or expanded rules pertaining to trolling uploads, regarding the current situation of posting ~20 chapters ahead poorly-translated uploads for the sole purpose of getting entertainment out of annoying people (by https://mangadex.org/user/61949/steamedbuninvasion of https://mangadex.org/group/6856/sssss/comments/ )

Mod viewpoints: I don't know how to find the post ID, nor if any made any further posts after this (let me know).
Zephyrus has made his viewpoint here: https://mangadex.org/group/6856/sssss/comments/
& Holo here (a few posts below Zephyrus'): https://mangadex.org/thread/171010/3/#post_1094093
Mostly get where they are coming from, especially in regards to provability and not wanting to police except in absolutely required or provable situations....

However:
Legitimate intention of skipping ahead is easily proven by mangaupdates data (dropped or "no mangadex"-type scanlators, retranslations) or popular online stores: (dropped licenses). Those aren't even real jumps, they only look like it on MD. As long as there's any discernible reason for a "jump ahead" besides purely for trolling.

It is easy to prove some "reasonable deduction of intent" by their upload history and comment history. Currently, he happens to be comment banned, which should be enough of an indicator to his intentions. And should be enough justification to also upload ban.
If you wanted absolute proof, well you'd need a mind reader. In the same vein, it's probably difficult to come up with an absolute rule for this trolling, and most likely something subjective is going to come up.
Holo did bring up the possibility of someone scanning random chapters legitimately for no ill reason, but in that case they wouldn't be being so rude in the comments. If they really didn't care, then logically, they would either not post comments at all or switch to sequentially because there's no disadvantage to doing so if they just wanted to translate something random. In any case most people would still opt to ignore their uploads.

Tentative rule suggestion: A strike system to count multiple infractions of "upload aheads" (say 2 or 3 or 5) that aren't legitimate intent, within a time period (say 1 year). When someone reports a user/group, the mods would only have to look at their total recent upload/comment history once to decide on a ban. There's a tentative description of "legitimate intent" above.

One year being a reasonable workaround in case he decides to game the rules by posting like once per month. As mentioned before it should be easy for the uploader to prove legitimate uploads if he or someone wanted to contest the ban. Then again he could troll once per year but that wouldn't be very satisfying.

And there should be no reasonable reason as to why a group is jumping ahead trice. But if you really want good data proof you could wait for ~5.
Even once or twice is difficult to justify. I have seen drama of a group jumping 5 chapters ahead twice to annoy another morally-questionable scans group with delayed patreon-gated releases. But they had a reason besides "annoying readers" and so that falls under sniping/concurrent-release moreso than this topic (FYI idc about sniping and it'd be another thread).
This isn't intended to punish anyone innocent, even any weak justification not strictly for annoying users counts as innocent. Reasons such as "starting at the current week's release and continuing there while someone else is scanning the backlog" or "group drama" would count. The user in question right now has no justifications whatsoever. Scanning the ending chapter or some random chapters in no discernible order (while comment trolling) does not count. It is apparently enough they are doing it for trolling more than anything else.

Would also have liked to tie his bad translation quality into it somehow, but that is so subjective it's impossible. Not to mention the numerous existent machine translations around.

I hope someone else comes up with something better below though so I don't have to think about this too much. Personally I am just waiting for the block feature, but in the meantime he has uploaded some 5 or more troll chapters.

 

[Vofuro]

There's actually a feature planned where you can block uploads from certain groups - which you mentioned, as I see right now. Wouldn't that fix things as well?
While I do like your rule suggestion, it's a very long-term one. And it wouldn't help, because then they would just create a new group to troll, and new accounts. As long as you do know the group right now, you can avoid clicking on their chapters.

I just think policing the scanlating group is bad. If they break the rules, it's another thing altogether, but as it is, they aren't really breaking any, are they? I especially wouldn't recommend a strike system based on the community. There's enough people here who would report perfectly normal scanlation groups because they don't like them or other superficial reasons. Same reason I'm against rating scanlation groups.

I fear the best thing to do is to actually wait for the blocking feature. If everyone blocks trolls and doesn't reply, it stops being fun for them and they would stop eventually.

Edit: But, yeah, I agree 100% that group leader is a total troll, seeing his posts and all. He does feel like the type to create tons of new groups, too, in order to continually troll people... maybe we do need a rule addition for scanlators, instead of such a reporting system.

 

[axelTHEGREAT]

What's wrong with them?

edit: whoops, that was rude. @MisakaxMisaka

Then sure enough https://mangadex.org/title/20891/urara-meirochou

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

I would prefer a staff approval for big gap chapters this would nip them permanently and kill off all trolling and even sniping

Let's say we have a series that has 200 chapters and the current scanlator is only at 96 and somebody decides they want to upload 106 that would be frozen until one of two things happen 1) they translate the previous chapters including the current or 2) they wait until the other group gets caught up

I honestly prefer this system instead because it nips everything in the butt immediately

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

axelTHEGREAT
What's wrong with them?

Then sure enough https://mangadex.org/title/20891/urara-meirochou

 

[Vofuro]

Maybe mod approval if there's a chapter difference of over 20, 30 chapters or so? I'm sure you can implement that chapters that have such a big difference between the last chapter and the uploaded one are shortly frozen by the system until a staff member can check if it's legit.
Doesn't help if they rename the chapter though, but then I'm pretty sure that would be breaking rules.

 

[Furakutaru]

How about an option (like the hentai toggle or the one for the deleted chapters ) to choose to either hide or show all chapters with a gap?

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

That could be ok but do we really want to make more work for the site coders? I'm sure they already have enough on their plate

 

[Vofuro]

also a possibility: Warning if there's a gap between your read chapters and the one you are about to begin. I've actually seen that somewhere before? Can't remember where, though. Batoto?

@MisakaxMisaka
Well. That's up to the devs and mods, actually and depends on a few questions, like: Is it relevant enough to input the work so the problem is solved possibly long-term, or do you want to deal with it later on and leave it to the human staff for now? Is it even that big of a problem in the first place that it needs an additional code?

 

[Furakutaru]

@Vofuro There is already something like that on Dex, when you try to read a chapter if there is a gap with the previous chapters it will warn you.

 

[Vofuro]

@Furakutaru
oh I see! But does it pop up then, even when you click on the chapter for stuff you follow on the follow page? Because then it would need to be added.

... I don't get the problem here, I think xD If you do get a warning, how can you still get spoiled by such groups? I got the impression on SSSSS scanlation site that people were upset because they were maliciously spoiled but didn't want that. And that warning you just sent certainly is not subtle, so I'm surprised people would click on it regardless.

Edit: Just played around a bit - you do get a warning, on PC at least. Doesn't matter if you click the chapter directly, on the follow page or on the manga page itself. You always get a warning that there's a gap.
Edit 2: On mobile as well, by the way. Literally no way to get to said chapter and not see that helpful warning.

 

[Furakutaru]

@Vofuro I also don't think it's a big problem, but some people are still unhappy about that so I try to find a solution to compromise.

By the way it seems that no matter how you access to the chapter you will be warned, even if someone gave you a direct link.

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

That one only works on default and not legacy which I assume 90% of everyone on here uses

 

[crazybars]

Zephyrus already stated the Staff opinion on this in the SSSSS Group page, which is to not police Scanslation groups. (This is really just SteamBunInvasion's page).


They updated the Mangadex reader chapter gap notification thing to appear when you click on the chapters directly.

SteamedBunInvasion was completely 100% responsible for forcing this change because he was getting his chapters on the Last updated page and Spoiling the last chapters by circumventing the Chapter gap notifications.

(Okay, last chapter Spoiler people, not just SteamBunInvasion. That would be gangsta if he was responsible for it 100%, but it's probably not.)


https://mangadex.org/group/6856/sssss/comments/

*edit: 9/15/19
Edits are Underlined and Bolded.

 

[Vofuro]

Now everything makes sense. Apparently that change was made just this week, too. Well, I'm still glad for this change, guess that story did have some good to it.

So essentially, people now want to see a certain group (leader) burn? That could be problematic, because Mangadex is greatly against policing scanlation teams, and prematurely posting chapters of manga was something that happened before, too, and sometimes with good intentions as well. Usually it was because people read ahead and simply wanted that one cool scene scanlated, though xD Like with Tokyo Ghoul.
Just throwing that out there.

But guess SteamedBunInvasion is currently banned anyway, and it's just a matter of time until it's permanent unless he learns.

 

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

I am not reading any of the series affected by this but honestly I'm with the mods on this: I don't really feel like there's a real need for special moderation simply based on skipping ahead.

As it is there are more than enough warning systems of chapter gaps already in place, not even mentioning the chapter numbers and "END" label any link on the Updates page gets. Any user who decides to read such chapters does so on their own risk of spoilers. Even if the scanlation is low quality as long as the actual translation is accurate I don't find that alone a reason for staff to intervene.

Additionally, there are legitimate reasons why a group might want to carry on from a later point. If group members have been keeping up with a running series in Japanese and wish to scanlate it despite there being a gap between the series and previously available scanlated chapters, they might not want to buy, or bother, with a large backlog of chapters but rather work from where a series is currently at, optionally working their way backwards at a later date. It's then to users to decide whether they wish to read such a release or wait until they, or some other group, fills the gap.

Additionally, looking at the latest release (Spoiler free link) of the group in question, they even went through the trouble of adding a spoiler warning of themselves, and the release itself does not seem to be low effort enough to be clearly a troll (even if we're going by an assumption of bad faith on the reasons of why they themselves say they're releasing it, which I'm not in the habit of doing), so I don't see a good reason to intervene in this specific case either. And If people then attack you, simply for not releasing a chapter in sequence to the point they are personally at, I'd react the exact same way too.

 

[zxcsreenxz]

I really hate those scan group trolls altough the readee always tells a chapter gap it didn't work that well to chapter that have a weird number like from 11 to 12.1-12.2 and went back to ch13 so a lot of the ppl ignored it

Or went you have so much followed manga that you forgot what is the last chapter you read on a specific title and just click the link on the following list

 

[MadeOfMagicAndWires]

@zxcsreenxz

I mean I currently have 255 titles set as reading (although admittedly some don't all get releases that frequently) but when a chapter gap goes from 20 -> 53, or 30 -> 62 I think I'd still notice. If people receive a warning but simply ignore/don't read it that is kind of on them. In my experience chapter gaps aren't so common that that you should be clicking it away as fast as it appears, especially outside of anthologies.

 

[Yautja]

They police "troll" comments, and we can easily ignore those, there's no reason they shouldn't police troll scanlations which are far more annoying. These kinds of scanlations also do have negative affects, even if they are ignored. Groups have dropped series because of this kind of stuff. Not to mention it's unnecessary bloat. Also, if this kind of shit is resulting in code changes to the website, that alone shows that there should be a rule against this. It'd kinda be like having locks on a door, but it not being illegal for someone to break that lock.

 

[BestBoy]

What about a visual cue for troll groups? Like make their group names red or something? Or an additional warning when opening chapters from troll groups?

I'd be all for a timed upload ban similar to comment bans, as well.