The "Thank You" Button counter

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

This is a response to @littleoni's suggestion. I already mentioned it there but I thought that it's worth making a new thread about.

The (shortened name) Thx button is basically a counter that serves three purposes:

1. It's a quick way for the readers to know the quality of the scanlation.

Spoiler

It's easier to explain with examples.

Two scanlating teams race to translate a series.
The better group would have more Thxs, thus newcomers know which group to read from. In cases where both groups are as good, speed will win (in most cases) so it does not concern the downsides of the Thx counter.

Someone snipes.
If the sniper has better quality, they will receive a lot of Thxs compared to the current group. If the sniper has poorer quality, they will have a lot less Thxs.

The Thx counter mostly exhibits this first function when two groups are competing, otherwise it will revert towards the second function by default.

2. It illustrates reader's grattitude.

Spoiler

It's as it says. You like a chapter, you decide if you want to give Thx or not. It's only a click away and located at the bottom of the manga chapter so even lazy users can appreciate the scanlator's works. This feature also available to guests.

3. It motivates scanlators in quality and quantity

Spoiler

I based this premise in a combination of YouTube and Reddit's comment system.

-If a chapter gets tons of Thxs, it is more likely to get more Thxs; monkey see monkey do; further making the scanlators happy.
-The total Thx will be summed up and applied to the uploader in the stats of their profile. All the Thxs that every member of a group achieves will be summed up in the stats of the profile of the group itself. And if you really want to push this a step further, you can make a leaderboards system to encourage competition, although possibilities for drama arises from this leaderboards as well.
-No one will worry about karma Thx whoring because nobody worries about this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-It also shows experience since a long-time scanlator will have tons of Thx to T-pose new scanlators with to show their dominance; aside from the teal username.

Other than that...

4. It cannot be abused since there is no downvote system.

Miscellaneous info:

Spoiler

-Each manga series with multiple groups translating would have a stat that shows average Thx per chapter. It's something like this.

Scanlator Group 1: 79 Thx per chapter
(Total chapters released = 1)
Scanlator Group 2: 123.2 Thx per chapter
(Total chapters released = 71)
Scanlator Group 3: 101.9 Thx per chapter
(Total chapters released = 71)
No group; Username123: 7 Thx per chapter
(Total chapters released = 1)

In this example, Scanlator Group 1 uploaded the one-shot before the manga became serialized. After that, Scanlator Group 1 and 2 raced each other with the majority favouring Group 1; they believed that Group 1 has the better quality. One day, someone random from no group named Username123 tried to snipe them with mediocre-quality translation. Yeah.

This can be located anywhere although I imagine it to be between "Reading progress:" and "Actions:"

-The actual button will be at the bottom of the chapter, sharing a space at the center with the two buttons that already exist.

[That grey box thing] [Green comments box] [Thx button with a heart]​

 

[ununseti]

This sounds interesting, but I think that the number of thanks that a chapter gets will depend a lot on (1) the content of the chapter (e.g. if it's a WHAM chapter or there's a killer plot twist etc., this will sway the number of thanks on the chapter a lot more than the quality of the scanlation) and (2) how long the scanlation has been around (incumbency advantage + most people will have read the chapter when it first came out, and so if a group comes back much later and redoes a chapter, it will get a lot less views). But perhaps it could have value in comparing two simultaneously releasing groups.

I think the suggested functionality would have more value if branded as a chapter "star" or "bookmark" feature, because then you can mark which chapters are your favourite. This is especially helpful in anthologies, where your interest can vary a lot between chapters.

Comparable functionality from other sites:
- AO3 has kudos: Both registered users and anonymous users can leave kudos on works.
- Pixiv has いいね！ (translated as "Like!"): Registered users can "Like!" an illustration more than once. The limit is once a day per post.
- Wikipedia has Thanks: Editors can send a "Thank you" notification to a user for a specific edit. The users involved in the thanks will be logged publicly, but the specific edit in question is hidden, and only known to the two users in question.
- Stack Exchange chat message stars
- Slack chat message stars
- Discord chat message pins
- SoundCloud song likes

 

[Pika]

Hey, that's a function that I'd love to have. Even if it's just one "Thank you", it's still make the day of the scanlators + they won't see it if it really was a bad scanlation (even though you can still see it in the comments)

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@ununseti You got pretty good points. Yeah, this system is biased towards popular and long-running series, as well as how good a chapter is, but at the same time you gotta send your thanks to the scanlators for translating those killer chapters in the first place so all that's well ends well. As for deleted chapters for a redo, I guess that's just a consquence of missing a typo; less Thx received overall (or we could make it so that deleted chapters retain their stats prior to reupload if the uploader and chapter number is the same).

But then again, "Thank You" button is just some name I made up on the spot so it can literally be called anything

 

[ununseti]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN On this site, it's possible to reupload files for a chapter without deleting it, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@ununseti Oh cool. Welp, issue's resolved.

 

[NovaXII]

Won't the person who uploads first automatically have the most "Thank yous"?

When someone sees a chapter they have already read gets uploaded, they won't bother to read it no matter the quality of it.

If reader wants to show gratitude they can just say thank you in the comments of the chapter or donate to the team.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@NovaXII Well, I know two popular series with (previously) two competing groups: Nagatoro and 5Toubon. In Nagatoro, people claim that both groups are of equal quality so naturally, yes, speed wins. But in 5Toubon, it's a different story. Although LH is faster than a/nonymous, everyone in the comments say that the latter is better thus plenty of people would rather choose to wait for a/nonymous' upload.

I say that speed and quality both have heavy impacts the number of Thx a group would receive.

 

[421cookies]

There's already ? button on each group page though.
It would be nice if there's like "Do you want to thank the scanlators?" area for every chapter and you can see the thx amount and thx/read ratio imo though.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@421cookies

It would be nice if there's like "Do you want to thank the scanlators?" area for every chapter and you can see the thx amount and thx/read ratio imo though.

That's the point

 

[minazukiCuumi]

if this get the green light signal ... I hope not for all groups. We prefer not follow any set schedules, neither are we interested in racing to release manga ahead of "rival" group, it may motivates other groups but i'm sure not Us.

 

[AccomplishedList1]

@minazukiCuumi Why? isn't this was good idea.

 

[minazukiCuumi]

@AccomplishedList1 it's depend on situation, from my pov, if our group ever has 'rival' we either drop that project or worst stop scanlating.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

I'm not a programmer so I have no experience to back up what I'm about to say but isn't a blacklist for groups that are allowed to have a Thx counter would be simple to do?

 

[vigorousjammer]

I think this is an interesting idea, but I think it'd be more interesting if there was both a "thanks" and a "no thanks" button.
Some kind of positive and negative, something that could balance things out by subtracting from the overall count instead of just always adding to it...

Now, maybe the "no thanks" would be a bit harsh, but... it'd also let scanlators know when the quality of their work isn't as good as it should be.
The hard part, I think, would be getting people to rate the quality of the scanlation and not their enjoyment of the chapter itself...

Perhaps a better idea would be to surface how many likes a scanlation group has next to their name on the chapter page, that way, you can perhaps trust the scanlation group with the greater number of likes to be better... which might not always be the case, but it would at least be a good rule of thumb.

Combine that visual feedback with the additional functionality of a dislike button on scanlator group pages, and I think it'd be a winning idea.

 

[MarvN]

No. This would be clearly biased towards a chapter being posted first, regardless of quality. Mainly, it'd be another thing to stress over. Having the pressure of being the most 'thanked' group if you're being sniped or something, that would suck as well as lead to worse quality scanlations. It would really feel bad in particular if you were scanlating something for a while, and someone else does fast but shit scans, getting more useless internet points because they were quicker. And in the case that a manga is being peacefully scanlated with just one group scanlating, as it typically is, it'd just be another depressing thing seeing thanks decline over time as less people read the series. Readers generally can't tell what is a good quality scanlation and what isn't, so it'd be useless anyway.

The 'sitewide internet points' is just as stupid. It'd be the same as profile views are currently. You would get more thanks for doing popular manga, and less for doing less popular manga. There are some very high quality scanlations i see with 1-2k views or even less, while some popular manga might have mediocre scanlations and tens of thousands of views. The thanks counter would be in no way reflective of quality.

 

[Hounder]

You also have the unfortunate fact that in this day and age of the internet troll and raging ego, there are those who will find a way to abuse it. Amazing what happens when you spam create a mass of accounts just for the purpose of up-voting selected items. Nice idea, but knowing that humanity has a habit of abusing good things, makes me wonder if there is another way.