Happy Holidays: Server Upgrades and Rule Updates

[deleteTF]

@Mods

I Have a question about the new 3.2.7 rule, and your transparency will be appreciated.

>If a manga contains a political figure (like a cameo, or even be a part of the story), are scanlators allowed to: To mention it? if yes, are they allowed to express an opinion about the person, said opnion isn't necessarily about the actions or depections of the person in the manga, and more like general opnions about him in the credits page.

Happy holidays.

 

[BestBoy]

@Nick86 No one is being censored. Rapeman and Koolio are completely free to espouse their beliefs. They just have to do it in an appropriate forum. No content is being banned. Why is this so hard for you to understand? And how do you not see the irony in you wanting to ban people for their opinions in the same breath you decry this rule change as censorship?

 

[Plykiya]

@deleteTF If the manga has political stuff in it, talking about politics is fine. We just find it annoying when a manga doesn't have politics, and it's inserted at random by the scanlators. That's what the rule covers (extraneous political content)

 

[kn1000a]

No matter how you spin it, it is policing content. When MD started out there was no such rules. Scanlation itself, aside from trying to curve it into helping official releases, has been at its core a free field for scanlators. You upload a chapter on 4chan, you don't expect anyone forcing you to remove a TL page. Only places you get censored is sites like KissManga and those other aggregators who will purposely remove credit pages and anything they deem not fit. Guess what that almost sound like? This second rule.

I would like to think MD's best selling point is 1) no ads and 2) it does not stoop as low as those other aggregators. However as more days pass, your moderation mindset starts to skew toward removing certain things to keep the place peaceful. If a scanlator is problematic, so what? Let them be hated, let them be flamed, let the chapter's discussion be full of needless salt. There's a block feature for people AND groups, what more can you ask for? There is no need to moderate everything being said, neither scanlators' or readers'. If a reader is insulted by something, then I feel like it is a problem on their side and not on the moderation site. They need to learn humans are shitty and can be provoking, religiously and whatnot. Crying to the mod for something triggering them online is not a solution. I have shit I get mad over as well, but I also learned to leave those people be or rally supporters for my cause in a forum and take action against them, if it is an issue I deeply care about. Why is there even a need to be moderating things that can be offensive? Especially in these scanlator's notes, which is coming from the people who brought the manga to us. They literally spent their time doing the manga, and yet they can't have the freedom to express what they care about?

Or perhaps, consider getting a full moderation team if you guys are so helpless and still wanna moderate every single things being said. Imo the internet is just a place you can't moderate everything. Making an effort is good, but trying to completely moderate everyone will just result in them moving away. If someone else were to build a reader site and promise it for being free of moderation while using similar system to MD, you will see how it will basically stabs MD in the chest. Hopefully you guys are making logical decisions.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Nick86 posted:}

Sorry ro read this, but if the solution is restricting or censor scanlators works i prefer to fight the issue targeting the people who try to ban such opinions.

People are complete free to post the exact same politics meme images they've been doing so far, just in the appropriate subforum instead of the chapter where the result is invariably a shitshow that would be avoidable.

 

[Nick86]

@BestBoy - This is wrong, you forced scanlators to move part of their work in another section because they can offend someone. Is another form of censorship. The work should be published entirely as intended by the creator, if you have issue with the extr pages just block it so you will not read such content. Is so hard?

Banning people who ask censorship is not censorship, itrolling is against the rule, since you have the tools to hide content such debate should never exist in the first place.

 

[Nick86]

@Teasday - I disagree with this, because if a scanlator release 20 pages and you move the last 2 to another subforum, you remove the original content and "hide" it.
The extra pages are so moved so less people can read them, because you never know they are created in the first place since in a manga forum you read the chapter and do not care about subforums or search if there are more pages of the same chapter elsewhere. Make no sense and is a sorta of indirect censorship.

As i said, you guys are the admins and so can do whatever you want, of course, but i still think is wrong and not the correct way to manage the issue.

 

[deleteTF]

@Plykiya
Thanks for the response. Another question:

You said it's fine to talk about certain political figures actions even if those actions aren't depicted or mentioned in the manga, they are allowed as long as the discussion is focused on the person. So does that also extend to other topics like for example racism, if the manga contain racist topics in it, it's allowed to talk about it in a broader sense, even if what are you talking about isn't depicted in the manga?

 

[Plykiya]

@deleteTF Sure, if racism is going on in the manga then racism can be talked about. It would be silly to allow people to read a manga and then be completely unable to discuss what's going on in the manga, lol.

 

[BestBoy]

@Nick86 The manga chapter translation is the work. Credit pages are ancillary (almost entirely unrelated) to the work. Regardless, this isn't about whether it offends people. It's about having these discussions in the appropriate place (i.e. not in a comment thread of an unrelated comedy manga.)

Banning people who ask censorship is not censorship, itrolling is against the rule

"Censoring people isn't censorship if I disagree with them!"

 

[Nick86]

@BestBoy - Disagree, the whole work is a scanlator work, just because you add extra pages doesn't mean they aren't part of your work. The text and sound FX created to translate a manga are the same as the extra pages, created from scratch, they are part of the same package.
Is like you are publishing a book but someone decide that the last 2 pages should be moved in another part of the same book to be less visible just to avoid people to wine and bitch.

Why should the author be the one to blame and not the people who created the issue?

"Censoring people isn't censorship if I disagree with them!"

This is a convenient reply, if you ask for censorship and for everyone you lose all the rights because you are limiting my freedom, while a manga with extra pages what freedom remove from you when you have the tools to not read it if you really do not want? Just block it and block the translator group, you have an OPTION, but if you remove altogether or move some pages you force on me censorship because i do not have the tools to read them if i want to.

 

[flavorful]

@Holo

To the vast majority of you who support the rule changes, thanks!

I don't know if this is an intention to be dismissive of criticism or just delusion, no offence intended. "A vast majority"? You'd have to be out of your mind.

And to those who still have questions/complaints - I'm sure you'll come round fairly soon, once you see that nothing is going to change fundamentally with how we approach moderation.

Maybe so, but it doesn't do much to quell dissenters when you're this nonchalant about the complaints in this thread. If anything it seems rather dismissive, the good old "You don't know what you want but you will because we know better" trick. Not trying to add implication to your intention, but that's how it reads.

Basically this whole thing strikes of "This is what we're doing and if you like it great that's our perpetual pat on the back. If you don't then fuck you this is what we're doing."
And if that's the case and the admin/mod team is above the discussion and nothing will change their minds I think it'd be fair and respectful enough to those of us who disagree to just come out and be real about it and say "Decision is made and that's final. No amount of discussion will change this."

edit: typos

 

[Teasday]

_{@Nick86 posted:}

but i still think is wrong and not the correct way to manage the issue.

Believe me, it would be lovely if we could just ignore the whole issue. We've been trying hard doing that for a long time. It's just not working so great anymore.

From the way you're talking, I do have to wonder where you would draw the line for the extra content. Why is/isn't removing ads, for example, unacceptable censorship? Should people be able to insert unrelated image dumps to otherwise one-page chapters because it's part of the work?

 

[Plykiya]

@flavorful Our announcement on reddit received well over 700 upvotes. Obviously there are no upvotes here so people reading the thread and people who agree are less likely to reply, but a majority of people do agree with the changes. Lack of upvotes is an intentional decision to avoid an echochamber. Doesn't mean there aren't people who disagree with it, but we've answered them.

 

[DLRevan]

@flavorful It's equally deluded to think the vast majority are against it.

The vast majority just want to read manga. They are not here to read political commentary. They barely care what is on the credits page.

With that being said, MD is certainly not the place for such things and I think it's generous at all that you can discuss such things at all in the general forums. It's not about censorship. It's honestly about, why the heck are you even doing this here. It's manga. We're here to read manga. We're here to maybe discuss manga. Why does it have to be so complicated and why does there have to be so much angst about how it's done?

I'll be honestly very frank, if you don't like how it's done on this site, do it yourself, as cliche as it sounds. Because that is literally what many people have done, both now and before, instead of pontificating about censorship and freedom of speech/choice. That is a lot of gall for the lot of you who benefit off pirated grey content, as if you have some indelible rights here. This is a privately maintained site, done practically out of charity, and even contributors are not "customers" who can demand anything.

I will also add, discussing it and suggesting changes is fine and all. But the admins don't have to take it. And just because they disagree doesn't mean they didn't consider it. That already assumes you are right and they are not. That's well and good, but if anything goes wrong, you're not the one who has to fix the problem, they are.

 

[BestBoy]

@Plykiya In total the posts about the new rule have about 1100 upvotes and your individual comment explaining it is just shy of 600 upvotes. I'd say, of the people engaged with the community, it's pretty much overwhelming support.

 

[Teasday]

_{@flavorful posted:}

And if that's the case and the admin/mod team is above the discussion and nothing will change their minds I think it'd be fair and respectful enough to those of us who disagree to just come out and be real about it and say "Decision is made and that's final. No amount of discussion will change this."

If anything it seems rather dismissive, the good old "You don't know what you want but you will because we know better" trick. Not trying to add implication to your intention, but that's how it reads.

Our rules obviously aren't set in stone, but until someone has a better idea that amounts to something more substantive than "just allow everything, people should have the tools already" and/or addresses our actual problem with something other than "just get more mods (and replace them when they burn out)", there's not really much to grasp there. I would love to make this rule unnecessary so for the love of god give us an actualizable reason.

This rule has nothing to do with "you don't know what you want", and if that's really what you think, it seems to me you're fundamentally misunderstanding why we had to make it despite presumably reading our reason. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that having to remove credits pages isn't just the lesser of two evils here.

 

[Holo]

@flavorful

If someone can make a convincing argument as to why a scanlator has a predetermined right to insert any page they want, regardless of content, into a chapter, that's completely unrelated, then I'm all ears.

Until now, all arguments have been unconvincing:

1. Policing scanlation - At a casual glance, it may seem like we're policing scanlation, but if you think about what scanlation actually is (taking raws, cleaning, translating, typesetting, etc), clearly adding extra pages is not part of scanlation.
2. Censorship - If we were indeed doing censorship, then we wouldn't allow political discussions anywhere. Political discussions are allowed in the appropriate forums, and if the chapter itself contains no political content, then chapter comments clearly are not an appropriate place.

Ultimately, the primary purpose of this place is to read and discuss manga, and these rules simply amend a loophole that's existed up until now. It's taken us two years to do it, showing that it really is a last resort.

 

[Jumballi]

I feel like this thread should be locked down, it’s clearly starting to derail off its original path. For those who want to complain and not listen, just open a one on one dialogue for each one.

 

[Ifrittuccia]

Happy Holidays everyone!