MangaDex Two Year Anniversary

[BestBoy]

I think ads ought to be a worst case scenario solution. It'd be weird to go against one of the founding principles of the site, and something regularly held against other services for.

 

[Goretantath]

i mean, i'm all for ad's as long as the donations are still available to do, maybe even have it so ad's get disabled for the donator for a while depending on how much is donated? Besides, people who don't like ad's can just use an adblocker anyway and the people who want to support you can whitelist. Just make sure the donations are still a thing cause idk how many people will adblock compared to how many will whitelist, i hope its not enough to make ads not do much.. I'd recomend adding an ad as a "page" at the end of the latest chapter, that way you get a boost and dont annoy people who want to read from the start since only the newest chapter will have the extra ad. A banner at the top and bottom of the main page seems ok, and the only place in the reader i can think of is the collapseable menu(so long as it isnt animated and hides moves with said menu.). Otherwise do what you feel is most likely to keep ya afloat. I just don't want you guys to have to close up shop.

Most sites that hosted manga were aggregators and didnt have to scanlators permission to upload said manga, so them "making money" off of ad's seemed scummy. This site isnt an aggregator, and even has the admins actively communicating with the community. I feel ok with them "making money" unlike the uncaring aggregator sites. The only one i dont know about is the affiliate sponsor, since it seems too close to "going legit", but the other three seem logicly sound.

 

[no0neknows]

based

 

[Moodyz]

Just saying, I configure my ad/script-blockers and hosts file the same way I expect a proper revenge story to be written. Kill em' all. No exceptions. Ads are like roaches. Let one live and the next thing you know your whole house is infested.

 

[littleoni]

@Goretantath I don't exactly get what's wrong with going legit. Going legit should be the ultimate goal of any such site: to be recognized by the authors and original copyright holders so as to be granted permission to work with their IP's without worrying.
And about adblockers and other scripts, the problem is still there. What if the url to this exact ad is not blacklisted because it just came out? What if there is a protection mechanism like the one Google uses where they dyniamically change the url's to make them hard to catch through automatic methods? And the script to run the ad still has to be downloaded, even if it's never going to run: more traffic, more load time. And the script to stop the ad now has to run, more load time added on top (I'm perfectly aware that with current hardware these load time increases are negligible. They are bigger than zero, all that matters).
@Rygdar Not really. Mangatraders operated purely on a donation system. And even now M***kami runs adless (name censored to avoid promoting them). I never liked using them because they disregard all ethics by hosting official scans, and now even going as far as hosting the official ebook (which is plain old piracy, pretty much). And Mangatraders did so way before there were easy to use tools like Patreon. Are we spoiled by a job well done? Maybe. Is that a reason not do do a good job? Absolutely not. If you want me to remain in a site that runs on ads prove me first that it cannot run without them.

 

[Mikey]

@Plykiya what about something like SubscribeStar? From what I know, it is Russian, and thanks to the circumstances of it's popularity, unlikely to remove you.

 

[Kyxr]

i have no objection if Mangadex decides to use Ads, as long as they dont hinder my reading. i just hope that annoying case like the Manga41 before doesnt happen again. they really done a very good job of annoying me endlessly.

anyway, Mangadex is the best site for mangas. Keep up the good work. and i hope i can donate in the near future. (im still a student)

 

[ImightRemember]

would it be possible to go with a similar model as anilist? With the site being supported by ads, but users having the option to donate (via. patreon or whatever) to get rid of the ads?

 

[PantsMan]

@Rygdar bato.to was also always being run on a loss, had intrusive popups and ended up with significant holes in their library whenever they complied with their various DMCAs. Even then, it still had to rely on donation drives, since ad revenue was never enough. And that was a site that didn't even host porn.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180118012417/https://bato.to/forums/forum/127-announcement/

I know this won't convince people or the admins from a decision they were probably going to resort to anyway, but Batoto's admin was pretty open about the technicalities and difficulties of running the website. It's a good case study, since Mangadex operates on a similar approach and seems to be heading in a similar direction.

 

[Teasday]

@ImightRemember Again, the entire problem we're having is that cryptocurrency is the only viable method of donations currently.

 

[littleoni]

@Teasday I'm not aware of the current situation, but is there a reason setting up a PayPal adress won't work? Even without any setup you can send one time donations to any known adress, I think. And recurring ones can be setup sender side, if one is willing.

EDIT: And I don't mean in a way that would reward supporters. I'm just asking whether is possible. If I donated and the only reward I got from it was the site running, I would without second thought.

 

[Teasday]

@littleoni It's already mentioned in the OP that PayPal is not an option. The problem is not technical.

 

[littleoni]

It's already mentioned in the OP that PayPal is not an option.

Yeah, well, of course. What's never said is why.
PayPal is the simplest of options, but it's not the only one.
The OP lists some ways to sustain the page, yes, but none of them seem to be benefiting from the new technologies ages have brought us. As I have said before, there is a ton of middlemen and even if none of them can be used, a deal can be striken with a bank for people to make transferences towards an account. It's more of a hassle than donating through PayPal but not as much as getting into crypto or renting a server ourselves and giving you access to it (and I don't know how that came to be an option, you would have to get like 4 server for redundancy, so you would need 28 servers or something, just in case someone goes AWOL or decides to troll you).
Look, I may sound rash or radical. I kinda am. But there is the fact that we are being made to chose between the best of many evils and for no apparent reason.
I don't want you guys to stop doing what you are doing, you are doing a great job (mostly. I don't always agree with every decision, but it's not always sunny for everyone). And I want you to keep doing a great job. You need money to do a good job, you may need even more money eventually if the page keeps growing or if you want to grow it into something bigger. Securing a way to get this money is, and should be, a priority. Ads may, or may not cover your needs. I have never gone into the numbrs of ads as I have never ran a page myself. But I dislike ads, and I know for sure I would block them. And I assume I would be in a majority here. Will the minority left be enough to sustain this? I don't know. Will you be able to steadily grow your community while offering a worse service (a service with ads is worse than the same service without them)? Well, maybe. Again I don't know. Do you have to risk it? I don't think so. If your previous monetization drove you what? 4 months of clearance in a year of opperation? That's freaking good in my books. Why change it drastically? Why not seek a way to return to it in some way or another?

 

[Rygdar]

@littleoni
I mentioned batoto because it's the predecessor to this site, and people were fine with ads there.
Madokami is able to run because the guy running can afford to host it, probably works at a data center and can get away with having the site and ftp on one of the racks or some shit.

In the opening post Plykia mentioned "information security", so i guess they want to/have to move away from more traditional payment methods to keep their privacy secure. Which really just leaves crypto as a somewhat viable option. Even if they go with ads, they'd have to find a network that pays them in crypto in that case...
And as i said, i hope the donations will be enough, i don't want to see ads as much as anyone else. But "jumping ship" because of that seems silly, especially since you seem to like the site in general.

 

[Teasday]

_{@littleoni posted:}

Yeah, well, of course. What's never said is why.

The very same paragraph that mentions PayPal states that we're using "cryptocurrency to maintain information security". You should be able to solve this.

If we could keep using PayPal, we would.

 

[littleoni]

You should be able to solve this.

No, no I can't. As I said, you can set it up so that you don't save information about who is paying (more than their username, which nothing can be done with), it's in fact the default setting when you don't set up anything: nobody gives you their paypal information, they just request paypal to transfer you money. And that's with PayPal. I'm pretty sure there are other middlemen thata can do that and more.
But that's pointless talk. You are worrying about information security but are okay with total strangers having access to your servers? That's kinda weird, isn't it? If it comes to that, how come PayPal compromises the security more than literally giving you the credentials of a server we are paying for? Even if you changed the credentials, don't you think the person with the bank account could request a recovery and you wouldn't be able to do anyting? And then that person would have access to everything. Assuming no one will be malicious enough to do that is naïve in the least.
I don't know. I'm no expert and I don't claim to be one. But it seems quite a lot of people have solved this problem before you.
You are saying that ads are the last ditch but you are not actually offering to build any more ditches, are you?

 

[Sailor_Waifu]

@Darkmeep

I don't exactly know if the donation went through or not. I hope the current donation address is still good, I haven't donated since last march so I don't know.

 

[Teasday]

@littleoni It's not the information of the donators that's the issue.

 

[littleoni]

@Teasday
My argument worked mostly both ways anyway. You are still okay with someone having access to your servers freely, a complete stranger at that.
I'm not going to butt into your buissiness anymore, you do you. I just wanted some information for clarity.

 

[Teasday]

@littleoni No, you're misunderstanding what's going on here. Random people having access to a CDN-fronted version of this website does not put the information of anyone at risk. If it did, mangadex wouldn't be up and running.