Happy Holidays: Server Upgrades and Rule Updates

[Kanami-chan]

@Teasday
Because you lot will definitely disagree with me, so I'm trying to give you an offer that you might agree on.
Ban all the shameless donation begging pages. You really can't disagree with this if your goal really is to "at least respect the mangaka".

Spoiler

I know you won't, though. since tons of for-profit scanlators will simply leave, and you don't want that

 

[Teasday]

@Kanami-chan It's not about disagreeing with it or not, I'm just surprised that you undermined your entire point with the very next sentence.

"It's unreasonable to control speech, except when it's speech I don't like"

 

[Kanami-chan]

@Teasday
Coz I'm just like you. I want something that I dislike disappear.
For you lot, it's political stuff.
For me, it's shameless donation begging.

We're all unreasonable. Just be honest. No need for PR spin bullshit.
If you're going to implement your unreasonable shit regardless opposition, might as well implement MY unreasonable shit too.

 

[Kamikoto]

Totally fine with this. This ain't 4chan, keep the racist shit elsewhere.

 

[Enteryallowance]

Yes, not considering the token amount of resistance or critique you're receiving, you are being unreasonable. Scanlators take part in things and do something that isn't explicitly scanlating, what a shocker.

Helicopter parenting (not implying modding, dammit) a whole site seems like a lot of effort, and precautions have been taken for it, yet they're not enough? You can cue the platitudes, trite or even play the "go make your own mangadex" card. Credit pages weren't an issue before group blocking, nor were they an issue until lately, either. Not policing scanlations was a hardline stance quite a bit ago, yet it seems like that will also crumble in a fair bit.

You did say that it's a slippery slope, and it is getting quite the lubrication.

 

[The_Fapper]

Good job ignoring my post.
In the end, all i've seen from you are excuses that you aren't being paid, that moderation is hard and that it's disrespectful to the mangaka that you're already stealing from.
You won't listen to what we tell you, because you never had any intention to do so from the beginning.
Even something you yourself suggested, when agreed upon by the people who are upset, you then reject.

Just go full-blown censorship mode. You know you want to. Moderating comments is hard, right? After all, someone might say something you disagree with or don't like, and we just can't have that.
You know what you're doing. You don't care what others have to say. It's blatant at this point, and i've seen it happen so many times to so many websites over the years that i can say this with confidence.

Mangadex is already dead. There's no hope left for it, because it's very core is rotten.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Kanami-chan posted:}

For you lot, it's political stuff.

If you're going to implement your unreasonable shit regardless opposition, might as well implement MY unreasonable shit too.

I don't think it's politics per se, certainly not when the intent is just to attack people without consequence. It seems to me the political themes are just a vehicle for trolling, and I'm not sure how this isn't obvious to everyone.

It was implemented because of the opposition we were getting to our previous conduct.

 

[Teasday]

_{@The_Fapper posted:}

You won't listen to what we tell you, because you never had any intention to do so from the beginning.

Try telling us something other than we shouldn't be allowed to decide what content we host.
"And absolutely, the aggregator has no right whatsoever to determine what is or isn't in a finished scanlation, nor what parts they think should or shouldn't be in it. That is solely the job of the scanlator."
I agree. We're not telling scanlators what they can and can't put in their work, but that doesn't mean the aggregator has ever been a free-for-all and that everyone has the right to upload absolutely anything they want with no restrictions whatsoever. People used to agree with us not allowing ads and other irrelevancies on the site, now it feels like you want it all overturned.

Even something you yourself suggested, when agreed upon by the people who are upset, you then reject.

What was this?

Just go full-blown censorship mode. You know you want to. Moderating comments is hard, right?

I said from day one I don't want comments on this site to begin with. I was overwhelmingly overturned because the comments were supposed to grow this community. Which I guess they did.

It would be really nice if people could just get along and treat this site as a platform for sharing scanlations, not as their soapbox whether it's about politics, group drama, attention whoring, donation begging or whatever else. The community clearly doesn't want that though so I'm powerless here.

 

[Kanami-chan]

@Teasday
It'd great if Mangadex was just an Index site for downloading manga just like.... Anidex

 

[Lobotomi]

I don't agree with the second rule because of it's vagueness. This leaves room for subjective judgments.
Still it's your site, you do you, but please be transparent with the credit deletes.

You could make a forum category (e.g. Deleted Credits or whatever) where only mods can start threads.
When they feel the need to delete a credit page, they could make a thread with the name of the manga, chapter number, the credit page and 1-2 sentence why it was deleted.
This way nobody can accuse you of wrongfully deleting a credit page (given that you are not abusing the rule).
With this the comment section won't be contaminated, but there is an outlet for the shitstorm.
If I understand right your biggest issue was the off topic posting, so there should be no problem with having a separate thread.

On the other hand only deleting the credit pages is not right (in my opinion). That is part of the scanlators work.
I would rather see you delete the whole chapter and let the scanlator decide if they want to reupload the chapter without credit page/altered credit page or not upload at all.

 

[Yatsuki]

@Lobotomi
Why the rule was intentionally vague
https://mangadex.org/thread/198238/5/#post_1445799
Will there be transparency regarding deleted credit page?
https://mangadex.org/thread/198238/8/#post_1447102

 

[Teasday]

@Kanami-chan Just imagine

 

[usagiaddict]

Ah, the unavoidable spiral of more censorship to ...ease moderators' workload?

 

[RonBWL]

@usagiaddict There hasn't been more censorship, it's just made more clear. I don't recall having such a shitstorm in the past when this rule was first added

 

[Lobotomi]

@Yatsuki

I saw those posts, still I can't agree with a vague rule. Rules are there to follow, but how can you do that if the rules interpretation changes from person to person?
"Yes, there will be transparency." is vague too. What does it mean?
Will they publicly post a list of deleted credit pages or do I have to message a moderator to give me a list?
Being transparent is a broad concept.
I just don't want to see MD go down the same route as Youtube.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

 

[gormadoc]

@Teasday you're being disingenuous. Nobody is saying you don't have that right; they're saying that you shouldn't choose to use it in this way. @The_Fapper was not saying that you should put everything up, no matter what, he was saying that you shouldn't rip out credit pages you don't like by claiming that it's not part of the scanlation when it has been treated as such for as long as pretty much all of us have been reading, for decades now, and just after we had substantial drama over that. And responding to his accusation that you'd censor everything with "yeah, I totally would" is not a good way to interact with the community. If you want a good community you can't treat everybody else as the problem and needle them, even if other people aren't; you need to be professional and courteous yourself since you have voluntarily become an emissary for the platform. Treating people who are being mean or even just criticizing you with contempt makes the entire team looks bad. That happened with Batoto towards the end and the climate there was downright toxic for the last year.

 

[Zephyrus]

@gormadoc
You bring up a point that I've been wanting to address for some time now.

There's this idea that staff and moderators have to behave as if they're members of a corporation: the customer is always right, be professional, don't have feelings, be a robot, etc., etc.

I've come to vehemently disagree with this notion. We're volunteers on a manga site, not employees in the service industry. A lot of people don't care for how I express my opinions even as I execute my "job" as a moderator by enforcing MD's rules. I believe everyone deserves the right to common courtesy and civility, but I'm not going to talk as if having personal opinions or feelings can somehow ruin a user's experience on MD. Staff has been open and transparent with the community for years. If we think users are the problem, we say so. If we think other things are the problem, we say so.

There is a difference between being polite to our users and having opinions of our own. This idea that we have to be unfeeling automatons because users demand respect and civility while simultaneously calling us everything from SJWs to Nazis is ridiculous.

 

[cloww]

Merry Xmas

 

[gormadoc]

@Zephyrus If you want to be able to have vague rules and enforce them without engendering feelings of arbitrariness, you'll need to be dispassionate, at least when you're talking about actual site policy. Having people enforcing rules using that vagueness when they also express contempt for the people those rules hit will not turn out well. Again, Batoto. Having a more casual mod team works fine when the rules are obvious or rarely applied, but it's apparent now that they will be applied more often in the future and they're getting less obvious.

And right now, it's not really an issue of "unfeeling automatons," as @Teasday is needling and ridiculing a user on this very page who didn't say anything offensive to him or engage in any personal attacks. That's not cool.

 

[Teasday]

_{@gormadoc posted:}

Nobody is saying you don't have that right; they're saying that you shouldn't choose to use it in this way.

It would help if people weren't constantly using absolutist language to say that any kind of control is unreasonable censorship. There's been no nuance to this conversation at all.

The_Fapper was not saying that you should put everything up, no matter what, he was saying that you shouldn't rip out credit pages you don't like by claiming that it's not part of the scanlation when it has been treated as such for as long as pretty much all of us have been reading, for decades now, and just after we had substantial drama over that.

And that's the issue: it's extremely rare that we've been ripping out credits pages based on what we "like". To date that's happened once. Of course nobody seems to believe it even when we say that's not the case here, so it seems futile to try.

Or well, you could argue that we don't like having pointless extra work and the management of the smooth operation of the broader community vs minority scanlator rights thrusted onto us. What I would like is to have a website that keeps scanlations as intact as possible but also to make sure the majority of our users don't just drop us for associating ourselves with identity politics, drama or other issues that other aggregators simply don't have, whether that association is real or imagined. There comes a point where one or the other has to give.

And responding to his accusation that you'd censor everything with "yeah, I totally would" is not a good way to interact with the community.

Maybe I phrased that wrong then since that's to me a weird takeaway from what I was trying to say. I'm a lazy introvert, interacting with the broader community or trying to influence it to move one way or another is not something I particularly enjoy, which is why I wasn't keen on breaking the peace and quiet we had here before the comments were added. Regardless, now that we're here, I'm not trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Wanting to go "full-on censorship mode" is a bizarre accusation because I really don't give much a fuck about the personal politics of the people involved here, it's the constant trolling, smearing and what feels like malicious attempts to break the site apart that makes me say "yeah, I totally would rather not deal with it all".

And right now, it's not really an issue of "unfeeling automatons," as Teasday is needling and ridiculing a user on this very page who didn't say anything offensive to him or engage in any personal attacks. That's not cool.

If my tone is needly or salty that's because I'm pretty drained from this debacle. I'm not trying to actively ridicule anyone, but I apologize to anyone I did.