Data to back that argument? Because we're doing this because of that "tiny sliver of the site's massive userbase" being a lot bigger than you'd think (over half the userbase actually).
I would be absolutely floored if it was half of the userbase.
This poll from 14 years ago is the only poll I know off the top of my head. Even there, amongst the hardest of the hardcore fans (forum members on a database-only manga site), romanized titles couldn't reach 50% support. Admittedly, if you add in the choice of native titles, you do get up to about 65%.
My perspective has been that the community has actually been growing more accepting of English titles over the last decade (in part because I feel at least some publishers aren't butchering titles as badly as they used to), so I expect the percentage to be even lower today than it was then.
Given how different their audience is from MangaDex's and the changes over time, I think there's still no shot it's over even 40% here.
To give more options to users, as simple as that.
The old experience was probably the best option for most people and neither new option fits perfectly with what I think most of the site users want.
Previously on MangaDex, English titles dominated but when the official English translation was a moron-level publisher decision that butchered the original title, it is was often reverted to the romanized title (or just never changed in the first place). I don't know if this was the site's official policy or not, but it is how it worked a lot of the time in practice.
This was a great experience for users (though it sounds like it was hell for mods, I do understand that) - it was the best of both worlds. Titles are mostly readable and logically understandable, and the edge cases of publisher stupidity were often handled. This won't be an option going forwards.
The future of titles on MangaDex will be making a choice between having to memorize dozens or hundreds of romanized titles for your updates list and having to suffer some truly idiotic publisher title choices in edge cases. I will take that second option, but I do acknowledge that for a couple series here and there, it will be a worse experience.
I'm also somewhat concerned for the default user experience. Unless I'm misunderstanding, you also plan to make romanized titles the new default option when signed out or when creating a new account. I'm not super concerned for myself in that case, as I stay signed in 95% of the time, but I do think casual users will now have a worse experience, especially when searching.
Maybe I'm dead wrong and the majority of serious fans -and- site users want romanized titles for JP content. But do you think the people who haven't yet made an account (the most casual users and newcomers) hold the same opinion?
Also make sure you check the romanisation guidelines, where it clearly states that loanwords must be restored to their original counterparts, so the example you gave would still be "Wicked Spot" due to the title being in katakana and also being literally ウィ
キッドスポット (Wikiddo Supotto -> Wicked Spot)
Here's the title styling guidelines so you can check them:
https://forums.mangadex.org/threads/style-guide.1069431/
This doesn't address the fundamental issue of how little sense it would make in a different case where the author writes the title on the cover in both EN and JP but they aren't using loanwords.
I am glad the loanwords case is already covered, though, and I do understand there is value in consistent policy even if it sometimes tramples over edge cases.
False data. See AniList's default title setting as an example, which uses romanisations by default for all entries, includeing Korean and Chinese, not only Japanese.
Chinese entries:
https://anilist.co/search/manga?country of origin=CN
Korean entries:
https://anilist.co/search/manga?country of origin=KR
You're right. They strip diacritics, so it didn't show up in my search results. That said, given how the site specifies "Anime" and "Manga" as categories - is this actually desirable behavior for anyone (including AniList users) or this just a side effect of a JP-centric site using a JP-centric naming policy?
I maintain that, from everything I've seen and experienced, the desire for romanized titles to take precedence over English titles only seems to exists amongst a sizable portion of users for JP content. Even looking at translation group releases paints the general picture that romanization is not very common except for JP content.
I'm not alone in thinking this change is pretty bad for CN and KR, as evidenced by somebody else making a thread specifically with their CN concerns. I would advocate for four options in the dropdown for the new setting (instead of the suggested 3):
1. Romanized titles for JP only, English has priority otherwise
2. Romanized titles always have priority
3. English titles always have priority
4. Native titles always have priority
And I would also love for the default to be either option 1 or 3, instead of 2, both when signed out and when the feature goes live. I truly think it would help more users.
And return to having Group Leader and Power Uploader stupidity causing edit wars that hinder user experience even more due to constant changes of title entry names? Hell nah, unless you want to moderate that thing yourself, that is.
Ah, I didn't know of that problem. It does make sense to want to fix that.
I think that having some kind of moderator override or title lock makes sense to resolve the issue, but it is true that moderators would still have to intervene at least once on most entries, which is probably still a lot of work given MangaDex's large volume of titles.
