Well, that, along with the rule against posting non-Asian content should have been more than enough of a clue that he was not dong the right thing, so I can blame him for that. An honest approach would have been to apply to the mods to be an exception from the start, not to select the Japanese flag, which if done deliberately was intentional misrepresentation.
Code:
Do not upload:
- Western comics.
- Scans of official releases, including raws.
- Scanlations of licensed manga are allowed.
- Bulk chapters (e.g. Ch 1-10 as one chapter.)
- Obtrusively watermarked images.
- Images saved from aggregator sites, if an original source is available.
Tbh, it doesn't say non-Asian content. It says Western comics.. which in this context is ment stuff like Marvel, Disney, DC etc. This is at the upload screen. (The Rules pages you refer... is bit outdated, the upload rules at upload page is what should be followed. The rules will be updated btw very soon, so rules dont differ in several places.).
The rule is "Only content from Asia (with some exceptions)". I personally prefer Japanese manga myself, because of the cultural elements that I'm familiar with and which appeal to me, but I can understand why Asian works rather than just Japanese manga are included, because these countries share a lot of historical cultural influences, which make them in many ways similar and make them distinguishable from culturally Western works (even when they adopt a superficially Asian style).
I reacted pure to your
MangaDex part, as in the way you put it that only Manga and nothing else should be on this website.
I don't think it is racial, but rather cultural. It's like liking a certain flavor of ice cream. If I want chocolate ice cream, I don't want to buy a coffee-flavoured ice cream which looks chocolate-coloured by mistake, especially if it is mislabelled as "chocolate". It won't taste the same. If I come to the chocolate ice cream section, that's what I want to find there. Other flavours of ice cream can be in their own sections.
If I would say I prefer white culture above black culture, wanna bet I'm getting called a racist?
But besides that, what's exactly the line then? A Japanese born in Japan, making manga in France is ok? But a French born in France that lives years in Japan isn't ok? (cause this case the French person doesn't have that culture thing, while you could say the Japanese person does have that).
But the whole purpose of restricting what kind of content can be uploaded here is to make it easier for people who like the allowed content to find it, without having to waste time with extra searching, mistaken clicks, and needless scrolling past content they have no interest in.
But I have to do that anyways, I don't want to read Shoujo, Josei, Yaoi or Yuri stuff... those generally already fall off. My homepage is still filled with those... hell I have to scroll a lot anyways cause even in the categories im interested in there is a lot of crap. So in the end I still need to do that extra searching.
I'm not completely against non-Asian works being here, I just think that exceptions should be presented to the mods from the get-go for consideration as exceptions, and that if non-Asian works are to be allowed as a matter of course, I would really like a toggle so that people like me who are almost solely interested in culturally Asian works can filter out non-Asian works without the need for any extra effort beyond that.
I do agree, that in this case he should have asked a mod cause Canada wasn't in the list. That would have saved this discussion
But... I want a filter for non yaoi/yuri/shoujo stuff... Can I also have that? You get that almost every person has there preferences about what they want to have as function on Mangadex. While I do understand you would like it that way... in the end Advanced Search was made for that, to specify your preferences. I also use it if I search for manga (tbh, i general google or use mangaupdates if i really want to search for manga).
Edit: Well tbh there has been huge discussions in other titles... if it's constructive i don't see it as bad though
but I'm not staff so they can disagree with this.