Expanded rules for upload based trolling :rejected:

[Plykiya]

@Yautja The feature had already existed for over a year. The recent update was an improvement on it because the initial version of it was flawed, it wasn't the feature's first implementation. Many series have gaps, people want to be warned about those gaps. Gaps aren't always the result of a release like this, it could just be that we don't have the content on the site. People don't pay attention and get confused when they accidentally skip a few dozen chapters. That's the motivation behind why the feature exists.

The aspect of sniping and the possibility of a group dropping a series as a result is irrelevant. Any number of groups can work on a series at a given time, no one owns the series they work on. There are much more active attempts at sniping other group's releases and we don't plan on doing anything about it because our stance when it comes to policing scanlation is to be as uninvolved as possible. We're just a platform to release on, not the scanlation police. It's the group's choice to decide whether to continue or not

 

[Yautja]

@Plykiya
IIRC, the same dude and the same thing was the reason, or catalyst, as to why the original feature was implemented. And there's no denying this sort of thing was the cause for the feature to be updated. But the point remains, if this change is implemented to combat genuine trolling, as well as reasonable skips in chapters, a rule should go along with it. Especially considering there is a clear example of someone maliciously uploading chapters.

I don't have a problem with sniping and actually like it in the context of Kishuku Gakkou No Juliet, but in this context it is a negative, it's just one more thing on the pile and not the sole reason for a rule to be created. There's a difference between sniping a series and sniping the last chapter of a series 10 or 20 chapters before the translation gets there. It's not the same thing.

 

[Plykiya]

@Yautja

https://mangadex.org/thread/15545/1/#post_93114
The changelog for the reader features. The gap warning feature was added September 3rd, 2018.

https://mangadex.org/group/6856/sssss
SSSSS's first release was 10 months ago, after the feature was already made. It wasn't the same dude, reason, or catalyst

 

[Yautja]

@Plykiya
It seems this is what I was remembering this thread. So whoops. My bad.

Anyways, it was updated because of this trolling, and I don't think many people are denying that's what the user is doing. The underlying point remains, a change was made because of troll scanlations and since troll comments are banned, scanlations, at least overt ones like the ones that spawned this post, should be too.

 

[Holo]

I think the best course of action is to get the "block group" feature coded...

 

[MisakaxMisaka]

I say that's a wonderful idea

Not being sarcastic neither

 

[kenx]

Unpopular opinion ahead.

I don't anything think more than the warning that is already in place should be done. Maybe make it work with the legacy reader, as @MisakaxMisaka mentioned. I don't see the problem, since it's by all means an scanlation that doesn't contain anything sensitive besides the fact that it skips a lot of chapters, and if that isn't your cup of tea, the warning about chapters is already there.

Spoiler

It reminds me a bit of the playful (and not so playful) hate on the chocobanana uploads in the panda, even if has nothing to do with the situation at hand, no idea why.

 

[Zephyrus]

Disclaimer: Personal opinion, *not* staff opinion

From a personal point of view, I think @SteamedBunInvasion should be permanently banned, not so much because of the fact that he's posting a ton of chapters ahead in order to troll (though of course, that in of itself is an issue) but because he is an unpleasant person that gets his kicks by ruining the days of multiple people for *fun* and abusing our platform to do it. In other words, using MD is a privilege and you should permanently lose that privilege if you ever abuse it.

Whatever my personal views (and believe me I've tried to convince the rest of staff that the slippery slope stuff can go to hell :v ) I can agree on a rational level that it's not our place to police scanlation. As we've been repeating since day one, we have no desire nor the authority to be the gatekeepers of scanlation morality. Even if we were so inclined, it can lead to a slippery slope where we start letting our personal bias inform who we do or do not ban.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this as rejected since the "block specific uploader/groups" feature is on the list but feel free to continue discussing. It's been pretty interesting so far.

 

[BestBoy]

What's the typical punishment for troll releases? How can anyone rationalize that what's happening here isn't trolling?

 

[GrizzlyBurr]

I've been following the drama and usually don't like to involve myself in these things, but I really dislike this guy so I'm gonna throw in my two cents.

First off I agree he should be banned, if not for the uploads then for many of his comments, which are clearly trolling and break rule 5.2.4 in my opinion.

Secondly I respect the amount of restraint the staff have about policing scanlations, it really should only be done in very select circumstances. But this is a select circumstance where the uploader is purposefully uploading chapters to illicit a response from readers, NOT out of any love or enjoyment of the series. He uses excuses of series being episodic, slow translation, and abandonment (of which I believe the last is the only viable excuse he uses) but he really clearly doesn't care and just enjoys the attention. I'd like to just tell people to ignore him but as we've seen that's pointless.

Yes there are skipped chapter warnings and the incoming (soon™) block groups feature, but both of those just skirt this particular problem rather than solve it. Obviously it's not a good idea to implement a site-wide rule based on a single incident like this but a precedent will be set here no matter what ultimately happens.

My opinion:
The same trolling guidelines already in place for comments should extend to releases.

 

[crazybars]

@Zephyrus

Okay, I will change my earlier post to better reflect that.

The staff opinion part I meant was "not policing scanslation groups"
and the various changes that were relevant.

 

[Oeconomist]

@Holo, @Teasday, &alii—

Although I don't oppose the feature of being able personally to blacklist a group, I wish to note a trap lurking in that idea:

A malevolent uploader could upload scanlations of good quality (as opposed to the scanlations of poor quality from SBI) with large gaps, such that it would be clear (one way or another) that the gaps were deliberate. Many users would block the associated group. Later a group with good intentions might fill just the gaps, not also uploading scanlations of the chapters scanlated by the earlier party. For users who had blocked the earlier group, there would appear to be persistent gaps.

@Shadowbane suggested a greylist, rather than a blacklist. Or what about a hybrid feature, blacklisting on the Follows list, greylisting on the synopsis page?

 

[Tarage]

@Holo I think the best course of action would be for you to find your fucking balls.

@Zephyrus Go ahead and ban me again. I know you're itching to. Ban the guy calling you out on your bullshit but let the guy purposefully trolling continue to upload. Fine ship you guys are running here. Worthy successor to Batoto. No wonder you're hemorrhaging groups. Prove me right you fucking hypocrites.

 

[Oeconomist]

When it comes to trolling, it is worse to decide that something is trolling when it is not, than to decide that it isn't trolling when it is. It is even more important in the case of uploads than in the case of comments not to misclassify something as trolling.

The level of certainty appropriate to discussion here of whether something is trolling is lower than that appropriate to banning or to deletion.

Rules that rely heavily upon judgment calls would tend to result in misclassification as trolling of that which isn't, in very large part because it would be all too easy for the person judging to believe that something were trolling simply because he or she found it extremely annoying, but also because most people aren't as good as they imagine at understanding the intentions of others.

Writing objective rules that did a proper job of identifying trolling would be more difficult than some people comprehend, and than many frustrated people choose to comprehend.

Many of the same issues arise whenever someone proposes to ban pornography. Setting aside the question of whether pornography ought to be banned and just taking that much as otherwise a given, actually writing formal rules under which pornography can be distinguished from other things has been overwhelmingly difficult, even though a Justice of the US Supreme Court once remarked “I know it when I see it.”

Proposals that beg the question, or ignore the various ways that some behavior might result from innocent intent, or just declare “We all know it when we see it!” are inappropriate.

 

[dokkotak]

i've not been a victim of any troll-uploads spoiling anything so far, and i feel like the chapter-skip warning do enough as-is in notifying me.
what i do is go to the manga's Title page (as i usually do) and check the chapter sequences and get an idea of the group i've been regularly reading -- so that i can choose to avoid any out-of-place uploads from others. i suggest that more MD users be more aware which group's scans you regularly read, and stick with it.

Spoiler

Whatever standard you use to choose the group you want to read, stick with it, and be patient in waiting for that group to fill in the chapter-skip. and remember, you are not entitled to anything so don't piss scanlators off by rudely demanding releases... and remember, you will not die if you don't read that next chapter immediately. it is JUST manga -- realize it and deal with it.

re: upcoming Blocked Group function: i like the idea of MD users creating their own blacklist of groups and their uploads... maybe a greylist is better overall (so that a suspicious upload may still show on your follows/manga Title page, but you are at least aware it might be from a blocked group). and of course, greylisted chapter shouldn't show on the manga reader, but should show a chapter-skip warning.

generally speaking, being broad-handed in dealing with trolls/their uploads may save folks some annoyance, but i think that just leaves you to depend on others' judgment as to what you can/cannot read. i'd rather have that choice and risk the annoyance, to be honest.

 

[Zephyrus]

@Tarage
You are utterly incapable of following our rules aren't you? It seems the various times you've been comment banned haven't worked in the least.

I think you need to take a nice, long, relaxing vacation from the forums. Six months ought to be sufficient.

For future reference, blatantly insulting Holo and another member of staff is not productive in the least and is likely to lead to what just occurred.

 

[Teasday]

Legacy is only going to get any kind of updates at all if Holo personally can expend the time and effort to do so because we agreed early on that I'm not going to touch it even with a long stick

 

[chibit]

@Plykiya
The issue with this specific group (and any other that hits the final chapter of a series) isn't that it's spoiling anyone, while for some it probably has but that's their own fault for ignoring the warnings.

The problem is, it's just in bad form, for respecting the readers of the series, and the scanlator who's already working on the series.
It's like coloring in a public coloring book, (for lack of a better example) you're coloring everything as close as you can, from the first page to the last, and a lot of people are liking how you're coloring that said book, you come back every day to this book and a lot of people know that you're coloring the book, you even put your name on the pages you color.

Then someone decides to go to the very end of the book, and color a page in an unexpected fashion, it isn't incorrect how they colored it either, it's actually pretty close but it feels of off, like using a different color on a specific part that you already did consistently
(I couldn't keep up with the analogy here but, its like when you read a fan-translated novel and they're using the -san -sama, then you go buy the official translation and they use Mr. or Ms. it's not wrong per se but it feels off. back to the coloring book thing)

And since it's a public book, they're not in the wrong, but it was kind of rude to do so, without informing anyone.

Anyway a good chapter to look at of what I mean is the Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san translation by the SSSSS group, I mean the scanning is good but you can tell they're making a joke with how they're translating it, especially chapter 58 replacing the word 'cat' with 'pussy', it isn't wrong but you can tell they were making innuendos with the translation.

 

[Teasday]

_{@chibit posted:}

The problem is, it's just in bad form, for respecting the readers of the series, and the scanlator who's already working on the series.

The same could be said of all forms of sniping ever regardless of whether the snipers do a better job or not.

Even so, that's between the groups and readers to hash out. We can make it a bit easier for the users to deal with trolls as you're supposed to deal with them - which is to just ignore them, exactly as it has always been - but we're not referees and we're not in the business of dictating to people what chapters they're allowed to scanlate and what they aren't.

Your coloring book example is weird and not really analogous either. Nobody ruined your coloring book. They brought their own and placed it next to yours. Even if they drew it full of dicks, feel free to just not open it.

We allow multiple groups to post the same chapters for a reason.

 

[chibit]

It seems that I can't get what i'm trying to say across (mostly at fault of my own) However currently what the MD team is doing doesn't seem to be working well for anyone. But that's my 2 cents on the issue and your guys' problem to figure out. I wish you luck with these trolls, as well as any other issues that may come up later down the line.

I should really stop going to the comments sections in the first place but my inner masochist compels me to go there.