Should decently-scanlated chapters be appropriately praised?

[AlexEliot]

In my previous thread, I asked about whether machine-translated chapters should be tagged as much. That thread has received diverse reactions, however they have been predominantly opposed to the idea.

Applying a negative mark to anything will yield backlash, and makes it difficult to moderate because one wrong action can piss people off in a flash, plus the extra time required from a moderator to affirm whether a chapter is machine-translated or not. One other point made was that it would not solve the underlying problem, which is the user's need to know the quality of a scanlation beforehand.

Then, a fellow recuit developer of ours proposed an idea that piqued my interest quite a bit, which made me think that it even deserves its own thread.

So, on the contrary, should there be a way for good scanlations to receive praise?

Let me quote a reply to that message from that thread, which I think would be a good starting point for this discussion:

To ensure that groups who upload first don't get an unfair advantage, I imagine it would be based on a percentage of the views rather than just comparing two integers. How to do it safely would need a little data analysis with a sample of a period where we'd run this without any visible effect—there certainely is a perfect point we can have decent confidence rate.

Basically having a "what did you like about this chapter?" with options such as "good translation" / "good lettering" etc.. While also displaying a message that advises the user to vote based on their honest opinion and ignore the scanlator asking for commendations on their credit page (because they will do it).

What do you think? Is there a way this can lead to unfair advantage for anyone? If so, can that be prevented?

 

[pandascepter]

YES FUCK YES. Just look at those godlike Redraw and Edit.
its just like Fansub all along. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

 

[ma_ko]

YES FUCK YES. Just look at those godlike Redraw and Edit.
its just like Fansub all along. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

You're already getting full marks from me

 

[ieatass69]

Add a nut button. We can smash the nut button to show our appreciation.

 

[Tristan__]

chapter ratings

inb4 9 stars avg. bayesian rating

 

[happypurple]

my based, objective opinion:
You can't trust readers to know what goes into a good scanlation, let alone reasonably expect them to be fair in picking one over another or be consistent. Even if they knew enough about scanlation to pick a favorite between directly competing scans accurately, if chapter comment sections have taught me anything its that the most you can expect from the average reader is that they'll just make whatever excuses they think back up their snap judgement.
The line between good or bad is arbitrary and can be hard enough to draw even for people who actually know what they're doing. You could limit voting to contributors or people with uploads, ect, but even then, people who actually know what they're talking about are gonna get drowned out by the endless tide of people who've posted one shittl chapter and who's knowledge of scanlation extends to knowing that the name of that one font is wildwords.


Few options/ideas for you:

- Any user can leave a simple like or dislike for the quality of the scanlation, with the ratio showing up in the UI somewhere. with or without specific feedback options like you said, maybe something like a report button, or special comment section specifically for comments about the quality of the scanlation so poeople (like me) will stop submitting reports for the mods to decline about how bad the scan quality is.
Maybe bonus marker/tag/field/something (idk, you're the dev here) in the comment section/somewhere for comments about the quality of the scanlation itself rather than the chapter of the manga.

- be able to post a review for a scanlated chapter in the same way we will (eventually) (?) be able to review a manga/title page itself. (independant of the comment section)

- scannie council or scannie argument chamber somewhere to mark chapters as "good" (whatever the hell that means)

and of those options the only really viable one in terms of practicality and legitimacy is letting anyone leave a like or dislike.
At least we'll be able to know which chapter is the snipe without mousing over the post dates, because all the redditors will updoot the poor innocent shittl that came first, or whatever. Try to think of it as a feature instead of a bug.
basically what i'm saying is that you should totally trust me and no one else to go around tagging good scans.
Is there no good tagged BL because BL scannies are bad, or because i'm not reading it? its for the reader to decide.

 

[pandascepter]

chapter ratings

since when tistan is pu? also this is what i thought very funni.

scannie council or scannie argument chamber somewhere to mark chapters as "good" (whatever the hell that means)

iz also what i told

 

[ieatass69]

if chapter comment sections have taught me anything its that the most you can expect from the average reader is that they'll just make whatever excuses they think back up their snap judgement.

It's 100% gonna be "thanks for picking up this series" even if it's some shitty mtl.

Just let everyone smash the nut button. I swear it's the best option.

 

[pandascepter]

It's 100% gonna be "thanks for picking up this series" even if it's some shitty mtl.

Just let everyone smash the nut button. I swear it's the best option.

Trust me bro aura is strong right here.

 

[AlexEliot]

chapter ratings

inb4 9 stars avg. bayesian rating

My god their their UI actually makes it harder to rate it badly.

 

[Tristan__]

it would be based on a percentage of the views rather than just comparing two integers

for the record, some semi-private Discord messages

 

[ieatass69]

Trust me bro aura is strong right here.

Trust me bro. Source is me, peer reviewed by council of me

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Seems like a waste of resources (hardware,time,etc) like the mtl tag and I guess it will even more resource hungry. Maybe the proponents of this system can create an external userscript or a browser plugin for those wanting this rather than further shitting up the current reader page and the server.Also,you can just donate to the group or if they only want "Thanks for the chapter" then do that to praise them.

>scanlation council

While also displaying a message that advises the user to vote based on their honest opinion

 

[comfykotatsu]

Some concerns of mine:
=> people using for bots to have their chapter receive those marks
=> one chapter has received the markings, suddenly another chapter appears with better stats / approval / ratings and takes the markings away from another chapter, gives some kind of sad feelings and makes the marks less worth it and might encourage botting even more
=> if we go stats / rating / approval based most likely the english chapter will have the highest of all of them, should it be split up per language?
=> bigger groups will most likely have higher stats
=> less know manga and chapters will probably go under
=> going with stats and stuff will result in us having to come up with some calculations which I would rather avoid
=> readers with bad behavior, those who will just give everything they read a bad marking

Instead I would take a different approach:
=> at the start of every month we create a dedicated thread in the forums where readers can recommend mangas they think its worth a mark
=> after a week we start a voting around that
=> after another week we will have determinted a winner and the staff gives them some marking
=> one week break

Advantages this has over stats:
=> marks cant be taken away by other better appearing chapters
=> less known mangas and chapters of smaller groups will appear too
=> will get more people to use the forums
=> no calculations necessary
=> we can change up the marks every month. One month you choose chapters with good typesetting another month its about well translations
=> people can discuss about it why they think a specific chapter is good and should receive a mark
=> people who recommend a manga must describe why they think the chapter is good
=> the worth of a mark has a higher value here
=> groups get some feedback about their translated chapters. Overall a bigger increase in community interaction
=> this should give the marks a higher value than the other approach
=> should hopefully also help against botting a little
=> hopefully everybody can see the reason why a specific chapter has received a mark

Things that are not set in stone:
=> it does not have to be a monthly thing, could also be every two month or three, but imagine it to be difficult to make it daily or weekly based
=> there does not have to be one winner, there could be multiple
=> there does not need to be a break, but it could built up some escitement for the next round and give some time to think about next proposals

Things I am not sure about:
=> is it possible to use the forum in such way?
=> will we need dedicated people to organize this every time?
=> can we deal with different kind of markings every month for a specific chapter on the dev side?

If chapters should still get some kind of stats / rating, then I would probably just go for up and down votes or the same thing like the starts you got on the manga title but for chapters instead. Which would not represent anything specific like the marks do, but could also be some valuable feedback for the groups.

 

[EOTFOFYL]

A rating system
is just another gateway
For the malicious.

 

[Trobilobada]

Instead I would take a different approach:
=> at the start of every month we create a dedicated thread in the forums where readers can recommend mangas they think its worth a mark
=> after a week we start a voting around that
=> after another week we will have determinted a winner and the staff gives them some marking
=> one week break

Yeah that's totally going to happen and not be completely ignored after the first time 🫃

If you want another rating system, make one groups based, not chapters based. I find it nonsensical to rate every single chapter, both in design and user experience. Groups are usually consistent in their releases' quality, or lack of. Yes, it has all the cons of manga rating, yes, groups may shitrate/dislike en masse each other. But the fact remains that there are way more readers than those belligerent autists. The only hurdle is to implement it in the UI in a way that the reader is made aware that they can rate them, but without being too intrusive (like a fucking modal at the end of a random chapter, jesus christ no).

 

[Teasday]

DId you know that we used to have likes for groups in v3?

 

[comfykotatsu]

Yeah that's totally going to happen and not be completely ignored after the first time 🫃

True, didnt think about that. People might not be interested in this at all. Maybe it would be good to just have it run only in the forums at first and not have any changes on the website.

If you want another rating system, make one groups based, not chapters based.

I am not sure if rating groups is a good thing either.

The overall goal and why this discussion came up seems to me that there are badly translated chapters because of various reasons, such as machine translations. So if possible you would want to motivate translators to improve and do better, in a positive and nice way.
There are very likely multiple ideas on how this could be accomplished and maybe my idea is not fitting, I dont know, I just threw it in here to see what others think about it.

The reason why I dont think rating groups is good either is because having a bad rate wont feel nice, which could lead to:
=> low rated groups might create a new group to start over
=> low rated groups could get unmotivated
=> discouraged from translating
=> bots (as always )

Groups are doing all their work for free in their free time, at least to my knowledge. I dont want to give them any pressure by possibly seeing a bad rating on their group page.
If we are going to rate / vote the work of the translators or their group it should always be in a positive way in my opinion.
Maybe instead of rating groups, creating a new page on the website for popular groups and showing their translated chapters / mangas might be an option too.

 

[Trobilobada]

A bad rating is not supposed to feel nice, it's a bad rating for a reason. Considering how ... accepting people are of shitty translations and TS, I am not particularly worried about groups getting discouraged. And if they do get discouraged and drop a title, it probably won't be a big loss.
Doing something for free doesn't and shouldn't make people impermeable to negative criticism. What you're suggesting is akin to toxic positivity. It's hypocrite and doesn't help anyone.

 

[WillLi]

Honestly group rating is probably the better focus. Not only because groups are generally consistent quality level, but it also targets the group instead of the work. The fact that groups are even bothering to translate things is amazing, and something we should be thankful for. But the number of groups that have taken advantage of that is too high. Being able to down vote or upvote a group is a powerful thing that can leave an impression with the groups

Like I bring up Nyaa again...but if a group has ratings too low, maybe all their releases get a red title, if they're high, they get a green title. And if you put the rating button on the group page instead of the chapters individually, then it'll discourage a lot of baseless ratings, cause they'd have to generally go out of their way to rate them. This also means groups can be praised or 'penalized' for things that aren't just chapter quality...like having group members that insult the fans or being one of those groups that doesn't release chapters until they get sniped but then suddenly has 3 chapters done the next day.

The amount of power a "I don't know if I want to read that, they're a red group on Mangadex" has would be huge, and honestly it would be rare people get red if they're actually being respectful. Even if the translations are bad because they're not experienced if they just say that, the number of people who would still go and down vote them would be slim.