Islamophobic Translation Group

[Greenfrost]

I agree the name is fine. First of all, the word Islamophobic means someone who has an extreme irrational fear of islam and muslims. It's a term for a psychological disorder, like Arachnophobia or claustrophobia. There's nothing wrong with the word itself.
Well, that's what the definition is supposed to mean, anyway. I looked it up on Google and it says it's a "dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force", which is wrong. That's the effect of the phobia, brought on by the irrational fear. Fear creates the aversion. They're giving the effect, not the cause. Someone at Google needs to change it.

 

[Holo]

The religion goes hand-in-hand with the people. Insulting the religion is insulting the people who practice the religion.

@Afiaki

Going by this line of argument, that means no one can be critical of any religion, and this is clearly ludicrous. There are certain aspects of Islam (or Christianity or any other religious) that legitimately deserve criticism.

Insulting a religion and insulting the people who practise a religion are clearly two different concepts. Compare: "Islam is stupid because <reason>" vs "You are stupid because you follow Islam". People are free to follow whichever religion they want, but others are also free to criticise said religion.

 

[Zephyrus]

Putting the issue of criticizing religion aside (come on, we all know what bigoted movement in Europe uses that as their slogan), I believe it violates Be Civil. Why in the world would you choose a username that is designed to be confrontational on the basis of religion? You can't prove to me that this user innocently choose their name, not realizing that it could be offensive or hurtful.

The philosophy of Be Civil is to make an effort to give the bare minimum of respect and courtesy that everyone is due on MD. For various reasons, we don't always reach that goal here on the forums or in the chapter threads, but it's an admirable goal to strive toward. Confrontational usernames are antithetical to this philosophy. Frankly, I don't give a flying fuck what your political beliefs are. The rules apply equally to everyone (or at least they should) and I adamantly believe that @Holo made a mistake when he allowed this user to keep their name.

 

[Kanami-chan]

I'll always side with those who actually provide scanlation for others.

 

[Kaarme]

@Kanami-chan Indeed. There are probably three billion people on this planet who could be challenged into ranting about their religious or political views, but how many people are providing free scanlations to the masses? They are likely only in the hundreds, active to varying degrees.

 

[Afiaki]

@Holo
Of course it would be ludicrous, I completely agree. But that's not what I'm saying.
It's someone's core belief, some people invest their entire lives into their beliefs. Human nature provides a drive to protect it, so it is actually personally insulting to people. It may not be an understandable viewpoint without the right example, which I don't have.

But, most of us understand feeling insulted is just a part of life.
I'm just saying that a huge number of people --hundreds of millions-- would beg to differ on that fact. Hence why there are requests for all sorts of censorship all the time.

@Zephyrus
Overall I think this is a pretty nice community though. I also really like how you guys in the staff can argue with each other and still move forward.
The focus is on scanlation, not other aspects. There's quite an array of opinions floating around and I think that it's good (for better or worse) that you haven't, for example, slapped SIOE because their username copies that of a political group. The focus is on our hobby, not really our relationships.

We all appreciate the time and care that's been put into this very good scanlator friendly site. Applying a moderation brush that's too wide risks ruining that friendliness for the sake of very few.

 

[Eonlars]

If a person like Rapeman is supporting you, you are on the wrong side. SIOE is literally an Islamophobic organization and if he gets to be "Stop_islamisation_of_europe" I get to be "National_Socialist _German_Workers_Party" or NAZI in short because it would be a political statement.

 

[Kowairo11]

Spring Day

 

[Zephyrus]

@Afiaki
The problem is that some people have chosen to use their hobby as a platform to shove their political agenda down the throats of those who are just here to read manga. So what if someone's name is just a political opinion? We don't allow it in credit pages, we shouldn't allow it in usernames. For that matter, Rapeman's username is a violation of Be Civil. I don't understand how someone literally has the word rape in their username and it's acceptable. But hey, it's the internet! We should all just toughen up and learn to deal with it.

Yes, I'm still pretty bitter that I didn't win that argument. I personally believe that it shows that we tend to treat GLs with velvet gloves in order to keep their content on MD. Guess I don't understand the point of rules if we're gonna have one set of rules for GLs and another for regular users.

As to staff disagreeing, I believe I am speaking for my fellow staff when I say that despite the literal shouting matches we've gotten in over various topics, we've worked together long enough to grudgingly respect each other's opinions. Healthy working relationships require this respect or you end up in a toxic working environment. MD is a challenging community to moderate because manga attracts people from all walks of life, with different political, personal, and religious beliefs. It's a constant battle to make sure you're being fair while weeding out the troublemakers.

 

[firelight]

"Quite dissapointed by thr Mods..."
Nobody cares, go back to AHS.

 

[Halo]

Bocchi-sensei! Teach me MangaDex!
Chapter 14:

Spoiler

 

[Afiaki]

@Zephyrus
I can see how moderation in general would be like that.
People value different things, and this site has a multi-national community too, so there's a lot of toes that get stepped on naturally as random people interact. Arguments ensue over basically nothing. Then some interaction that is normal to a person in real life is impossible to translate into text, but into text it goes, and...

Well, I have to at least thank you for trying to juggle various viewpoints and be considerate to folk before slapping them.
Thanks for moderating.

Edit: we need sage for v5

 

[TjapDjemboet]

just lock this thread already, keep it longer, more wide fire spread

 

[RexNemorensis]

Imagine making a scene over a username.

 

[silentshot]

Shall I spread my own agenda here?

 

[spacecowgoesmoo]

Thanks for making this post, OP. Guess I shouldn't have waited until the holiday was over. I'll copypaste some of my arguments from the other site since they haven't been posted here yet.

This scanlation group name (SIOE) and their editor's username (stop_islamization_of_eu) are xenophobic political messages. It's watermarked on the last page of all their releases in the form of scanlation group credits. I believe this breaks site rules 5.1.1 and 5.1.3:

Mangadex rule 5.1.1:

Racism: With the exception of a serious historical discussion, there is never a context in which racist language is acceptable on MangaDex. This extends to profile biographies, user names, group banners, and user avatars.

Rule 5.1.3:

Religious Discrimination: All members of all religions are equally deserving of respect. Insulting someone solely on the basis of their religion or slandering a specific religion is not acceptable on MangaDex. This extends to profile biographies, usernames, group banners, and user avatars.

This group also potentially breaks rule 3.2.7, which deals with credits pages. Although they don't include credits pages, their actions could be seen as breaking the rule's overall purpose of disallowing 'extraneous political content'.

Rule 3.2.7:

Adding extra page(s) to chapters for the purpose of crediting scanlators or translation notes is generally OK. Extra pages which contain extraneous political content, agendas, propaganda, commentary, race-baiting or content that could be construed as offensive may be removed by staff. Extra pages are also subject to the same standards as listed out in section 5.1.

I found one comment thread where someone asked a question about what the acronym 'ss' means in anime, and this user answered it with an alternate definition referring to the german nazi party. The manga chapter being discussed was school life fluff with no reference to nazis. This comment was also edited by the admins for some reason. It's not conclusive evidence of course but it does provide some character context.
https://mangadex.org/thread/18902/1/#post_116079

 

[firelight]

If you don't like it then make your own site.
Strange, that sounds familiar. 😎

>Somehow finds a comment you made 2 years ago
There's no search feature which means jannies scraped the forums so they can search through it themselves.

 

[KiTA]

Oh god, this is still going on?

@Afiaki

There are people out there who believe Vaccines cause autism. By these standards, I cannot criticize them because that would be "vaccinationtruthphobic." I can't criticize Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church, because that's Christianophobic. I can't criticize that Twitch moderator who thinks she's a deer in a human body ("Otherkin") because that's "Deerphobic."

Clearly absurd. Shariah law is clearly unacceptable and that's what the SOIE political group was all about. They are a dead political group (they haven't even posted a blog update in 5 years, and apparently hadn't done any activism in over 10) but the whole "throwing LGBT people off buildings isn't cool" stance they had is still valid. A lot of Westerners seem to think that Islam-the-Religion is like Judaism and Christianity and the people involved will give it up after moving to the West and integrating. But the Islamic-the-Culture-Tied-Together-By-The-Religion Ghettos of the UK and the No-Go zones of Sweden suggests this is a bit optimistic (or, as SOIE would no doubt say, ignorant).

People are intentionally conflating the religion and the plight of Arabic people in the EU / UK / US, and likewise there are Shariah law supporters who are very clearly preying on this cultural malfunction in the West. The fact that this originally was spawned by a reddit post of someone claiming the mere mention of this political group is "racism" (Islam is not a race) only helps highlight the malfunction I am speaking of.

@Eonlars

Did you actually have something to say about the situation more than "Grr, @Rapeman bad," or can I just put that aside in the dustbin?

You aren't refuting his point, which is, "If you complain enough, the rules will be changed to mollify the complainers," with the subtext that this is what left leaning political activist types do. He's right, and that is coming from a DailyKOS blogger.

The magic "Islamophobic" talking point does not trigger an empathy reaction in me. And actually I'm pretty sure there have been low key joking references to German WW2 stuff in translation group names before. And we've had literal Marxists posting socioeconomic propaganda at the end of their translations as authors notes (note: Marxism is WAY WAY worse than Nazism or Fascism) and to my knowledge outside of pressure from readers they didn't receive any flak for it.


I'll repeat what I said last page. MangaDex has tools that would allow the op, and the others in this thread who do not wish to see that group, to not see that group. If that group is translating a manga that you enjoy (the tights one does have amazing art), sorry, I can imagine how that is a bit annoying.

But you don't have the right not to be annoyed. You don't have the right not to be offended. And you don't have the right to tell me I can't read said manga translations if they don't bother me.

 

[Gian]

Can't say that I would have allowed a name like that, but I also it's not big a deal as some make it out to be. As long as their views don't bleed in the stuff they do. Not that I have much faith in a group that thinks it's a good idea to give themselves such a name.

At another time, I'd be more bothered, but with the horrid state of politics these days, it's pretty "whatever". Not like one doesn't hear much worse things from all sides pretty much every day.

Although, with that in mind, I wonder if something similar that goes into the other direction (like "imprison_all_white_people") would have raised such a big stink too.

 

[spacecowgoesmoo]

At another time, I'd be more bothered, but with the horrid state of politics these days, it's pretty "whatever". Not like one doesn't hear much worse things from all sides pretty much every day.

This shouldn't be a reason for inaction. It's because things are so bad right now that we need to try harder to bring civility back.