honestly, while they say we should be reassured by that, its the least reassuring and least helpful policy a group could have imo. equivalent to just not telling us its dropped. This would be bad bc:
1) Followers are left refreshing the page everyday for a work that is effectively dropped.
2) Groups are left thinking a work is being worked on (which... will at least affect the decision of picking it up by the nicer ones)
3) It reduces the likelyhood of new groups appearing. How did doki appear, why do they have this policy in place? Its because a group admitted they don't plan on working on Haruka anymore (was great btw. Even better when I re-watched it after becoming more of an otoku)
Now, I would understand if their policy was just
"we wont drop due to licensing", which
is their actual practice, but
not dropping due to having 0 people interested in doing a series is just lying about the drop status. You can always pick it back up if a new interest arises after all, but if there is no foreseeable future where you do work on something, just tell us by marking it appropriately as dropped. Seriously,
@Holo,
please release your group from this terrible policy! If you don't want to troll your followers, please tell them its dropped instead of leading them on with this seductive "yes, we're still working on it" speech! I know you had the best intentions when you made it but... I think by now the problems with it are clear, and the fact your group does not actually practice it is well pronounced.
Though, I'm being unnecessarily critical in an unrelated place. I am quite found of doki, but I have never understood that policy and I doubt I ever will. In fact, its just making less and less sense the longer it goes on. I'm pretty sure I posted various parts of the arguments I made here on the irc, doki comments, and maybe even forums at some point in time. But as I just accidentally saved the post with an @mention to Holo which was intended to just be a uname link, I figured I would compile them all here.
I wonder if those anime that were on hold for 2+yrs ~3-5 yrs ago were ever translated? I imagine they were picked up in a unenthusiastic translating rampage by now to remove older backlog entries, but it would be quite funny if they were still there.Doki has 2 works stalled 6+ years and counting. And
most ongoing fansub projects are stalled 2+ years now. (I believe 11-14/15-17 "ongoing" projects were last updated 2016 or before. There are 3 projects that seem like they may actually be complete, but incorrectly marked as ongoing)
I don't really expect anything, of course, Doki slowly transitioned into being mostly a scanlation group, and now most of the staff are overseeing mangadex. And these "totally not dropped" series have been an ongoing joke in the community since near its beginning. But still, it would be nice if, one day, they finally admitted they dropped these things. Its not like there is much of a demand for them at this point anyways(other groups finished them long ago). Though, I guess I might re-watch if they decided to continue (If they do, I request a release in 2023, at the 10yr mark).
Side note, the only real @mention in this spoiler is not auto-converting to a [url] on post. It turns into a link, but the edit button brings it back up as an @mention without url tags. I hope it doesn't send a notify on every edit.