@criver:
Replying to overly massive walls of text is not my idea of a good way to spend my free time, so this will probably be my last message on the subject.
"There's no long term damage."
There will either be long term damage or there will be next to no damage, but there will be no good caused by the drama. That's what I keep trying to get across to you.
"How does it matter that a group is purposefully slowing down releases to get money, while threatening other groups that want to release faster? I wonder.
What's more nobody needs to justify translating something, it's not licensed by any of the groups, so it's not owned by any of those."
So either accept that releases are slower than you would like, or completely ignore them and translate yourself faster. That's how a competitive market works, if you think you can do better then go do better, but at least have the decency to not attack the other side in the process.
"The community was whining about snipping. No-group could have easily not given any justification whatsoever if they wanted, but they decided to explain the situation. They provided facts. It's not no-group that's attacking anybody, they just brought to light how trash operates. I am sure patrons and readers alike are interested as to where the money goes, and why the releases are behind schedule. It's Dru's lies and shady tactics that are hurting trash, not no-group. They just brought to light a bigger underlying issue."
Then maybe they shouldn't be snipping then, huh? It's one thing if a group is a piece of shit, but being a piece of shit yourself in an attempt to warn others than the first group is a piece of shit doesn't justify being a piece of shit.
"It is more than acceptable, it is desirable."
Oh well I guess that makes everything okay then!
"It is more than acceptable, it is desirable."
- Osama Bin Laden, on the WTC collapse
"It is more than acceptable, it is desirable."
- Adolf Hitler, on the holocaust of the Jewish people
I'm taking it to an extreme length here obviously, but you saying X is acceptable does not make X acceptable.
"But it already did speed up translation rates. No-group provided the latest chapters in a fraction of the time that trash took. That by definition is a speedup, and a speedup of a few times at that. Trash's subsequent release of these low quality chapters was unnecessary by all means."
A speedup is a consistent release rate, over an extended period of time. A one time release of 5 chapters and nothing after it is not speeding the train up, it is derailing the train.
"And you're a bunch of chapters ahead, a win situation."
And now we could very well end up with no chapters at all for the foreseeable future, or quality is sacrificed for speed, or we could end up with two groups wasting their efforts fighting over one series, or very erratic release rates or anything else. All of these are losing situations in the long term and better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.
"Trash are only interested in money, so the manga would be dropped at the drop of a hat if there is not enough interest from patrons either way, even if we assume that your submissive reasoning is consistent. You may lack a backbone, and may be ready to lick their boots if they TL for you and throw shit at anybody else trying to disrupt their 'ownership' of the manga, but I am not. I don't think anybody should bend over and side with them just because they promised him they will TL this till the end. It's a matter of principles."
So let them drop it for lack of money and then instantly pick up the series from them, translating it at a faster rate. Is that not what you want? Show them no support, let them quit, take over and do a better job. I don't give a shit about Trashscans and two weeks ago I didn't even know they existed, my trust or liking of them is plus/minus zero, while my impression of no-group is in the negatives. I cannot trust a group that picks a fight and stirs shit in this way.
"I don't see no-group TLing already translated chapters. They very clearly stated that this is to make trash speed up their releases, and that goal was achieved. As for Dru making his team translate the already translated chapters in low quality, that's on him."
Let me explain how a larger group to you in simple terms so maybe you can finally grasp it, since I've spent thousands of hours with scanlation myself:
Chapters go up onto a group share like Google docs or whatever else, where each chapter has a line and each series has a tab (or some similar setup). Each relevant member of the group takes a chapter that's at a stage of completion that they are ready to handle, with cleaners taking raw pages, redrawers taking cleaned pages, typesetters taking the redrawn pages and the translation doc and typesetting the pages, the QCer giving it a final check and then releasing etc. It's one step shy of trying to herd cats and it's about the best you can hope for if no link of the chain goes on holiday right when it's their turn or whatever else.
What Trashscans have released looks very much to me like the chapters while they were 60% or 80% done or whatever else, rather than just throw them out they released where those chapters were roughly up to after throwing their hands in the air and saying "fuck it".
"At least trash won't be slowing down releases for the manga in this case."
How would they be slowing down no-group in any which way? If anything, this shitstorm that no-group are stirring up with their credits pages is wasting them time that could have been used to scanlate additional chapters, if they are truly that concerned about release rates.
"Two good things have come out of this already: the release of a number of chapters, and the publicity to trash's methods - most notably the fact that they threaten other groups, and that such threats should be ignored. Also the patrons will know what they are paying for, and the readers would know what kind of trash they are supporting."
A one time release of a number of chapters is not a long term plan of a quick release schedule, I am not so stupid to believe that as I'd rather a slow but steady release rate that gets there eventually, than a one time release rate with the series being dropped soon after entirely. The second one absolutely did not require any of this and does not justify any of this. An eye for an eye, leaves everyone blind.
"I detailed the justification in the paragraphs above as to why this was necessary. And I do not consider translating a number of chapters, to speed up releases a wrong. You are free to disagree obviously."
It's not to speed things up, I will consider us lucky if we even come out of the other side of this shit with a comparable release rate at the end of the day. No-group could have also just as easily picked up a dropped series and polished it until it became popular much like Turnip Farmers did with Kingdom, if No-group truly cared about manga and scanlation then they'd never resort to poaching.
I've seen too much of this shit over the past decade I've been around this community for, and not once have I seen a good ending to this scenario - the closest I've seen was a neutral ending where overall the status quo was maintained and a lot of hurt feelings were left on both sides.
This sort of drama is half of why I quit and now the main series I used to work on hasn't had a single update on it in over 4 years. The other half is the same sort of whining I'm seeing right now against Trashscans, with people whining that the free chapters they're getting aren't fast enough / good enough for them.
