Retirement of Fansub-related Forums

[Reckoner]

I think the idea is that if you limit the ability of translators to interact with the community it will disincentivize their willingness to keep translating. If they don't translate, then there is no content to discuss and as a result the community's participation in discussion within the forum will start to dry up. I believe there is a desire for AS to embrace this community and not actively work against it so that it can continue to flourish. I cannot validate whether or not this would actually transpire, but it does raise the question RF of what incentive does the AS community have to actively discourage this behavior in the forum. There seems to be a lot of dancing around this issue with concepts such as "consistency of rules" and a fear of a wave of one-liner posts surrounding linking and thanking people, but I hope you can imagine why this doesn't prove all that compelling an argument to the users.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I think the idea is that if you limit the ability of translators to interact with the community it will disincentivize their willingness to keep translating. If they don't translate, then there is no content to discuss and as a result the community's participation in discussion within the forum will start to dry up. I believe there is a desire for AS to embrace this community and not actively work against it so that it can continue to flourish. I cannot validate whether or not this would actually transpire, but it does raise the question RF of what incentive does the AS community have to actively discourage this behavior in the forum. There seems to be a lot of dancing around this issue with concepts such as "consistency of rules" and a fear of a wave of one-liner posts surrounding linking and thanking people, but I hope you can imagine why this doesn't prove all that compelling an argument to the users.

One of the main problems is with the licensing policy and what happens when the works get licensed. Let's say you have a thread with links to the translation interspersed throughout the thread. And then, some time later, the work is licensed. Now, the rightsholder contacts us and says "we performed a Google search and found that your site is linking to unauthorized copies of our protected content; please remove these links" (we've received a number of these requests over the years for anime, and yes that's even though we've never hosted the content). But unlike the torrent site where removing these links was a flip of a switch, we now have to go through the entire thread (or could be multiple threads if it expands into a sub-forum) scrubbing all posts and all quoted replies for these links. This is a massive PITA, particularly when the post count is inflated even further by all sorts of one-liner meta content.

And no, we can't make a policy that's like "oh but the vast majority of these will never be licensed anyway", because that's not necessarily going to last forever. Back even in the early anime days, people didn't post their torrents in the anime content threads. In manga threads, we don't allow linking because basically all the sites that host them host illegal content. But with LNs, we have this current situation, and it's made worse with LNs being text (because people could just post the translations right in the threads too).

So again, the whole problem occurs when you play the whole situation out from end-to-end, which is something the staff has had to deal with constantly over the last 10+ years. I realize that most of the rest of the users probably haven't had to think about it. (Most people probably didn't even notice that torrents weren't posted in anime content threads, and that torrent submissions were contained to unique threads in one single section. It was all done for a reason. Having these links interspersed inside forum threads is not a good method when you have to worry about compliance requests, which we do.)

The bit about eliminating one-liners and meta content is also a bit of a stylistic choice to focus on in-depth discussion rather than transient "fluff". We don't want to create situations where the signal-to-noise ratio for insightful discussion is so low that it's a choice between either living in the thread 24/7 to keep up with the "chat" or just randomly joining in and having topics cycle endlessly. (And again, as I explained previously, this situation has happened a few times in the popular LN threads that I looked at.) This forum's pretty limited in terms of what it does; it doesn't have vote up/down systems like Reddit so that the most relevant comments float to the top, nor is it threaded so that you can completely ignore side-topics. (The threading system in vBulletin is horrible.) The whole system is designed so that you follow it in order. And once a given thread starts getting too big or moving too fast, the UI metaphor and server performance start breaking down. If we wanted to create a chat room, we wouldn't use vBulletin. So we're trying to make it do what it does well, which is longer-form highly-focused discussion (and side-topics go off into other threads).


So I don't know if any of this will make more sense or not. But it's some more of the logic that goes into it, combined with the mountain of stuff I've already explained in this thread. It's not like we haven't thought about it.

[Solace]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I think the idea is that if you limit the ability of translators to interact with the community it will disincentivize their willingness to keep translating. If they don't translate, then there is no content to discuss and as a result the community's participation in discussion within the forum will start to dry up. I believe there is a desire for AS to embrace this community and not actively work against it so that it can continue to flourish. I cannot validate whether or not this would actually transpire, but it does raise the question RF of what incentive does the AS community have to actively discourage this behavior in the forum. There seems to be a lot of dancing around this issue with concepts such as "consistency of rules" and a fear of a wave of one-liner posts surrounding linking and thanking people, but I hope you can imagine why this doesn't prove all that compelling an argument to the users.

The thing is, those translators setting up shop here and interacting with the community is a relatively recent thing. The novel/manga section was growing long before they arrived, and if I had to make a guess they probably saw that BT's forums weren't as popular as ours and decided to poke around a bit, liked what they saw, and went from there. This has all basically happened in the span of less than a year, and it's been a busy year.

It's not gone entirely unnoticed by us, but we've had to balance more immediate issues, like the overflow of the DxD discussion and the forum breach, while also looking ahead long term, figuring out what to do with the defunct index and the old legacy bits from it, like the fansub group section and reshare request section, as well as bigger issues, like how to split the manga/novel forum and general site restructuring.

As explained before, the direction the site has been moving, for a while now, is away from the philosophy of acting as a direct promoter of unlicensed content and the people who provide them. This is us attempting to formalize that.

It's not good enough to only look at the current status quo though. We can't just throw our hands up and go "well, they just showed up, but now that they're here, guess we gotta let them keep doing their thing!", and run with that. We have to look at the long game, so to speak. What happens if we do nothing at all, and let this informally continue? What happens if we officially endorse it? What kind of policies will we have to change, add, remove? How do we structure the forums around the continued growth? Do we open up a section for Light Novel translators? What about other unlicensed content? Who manages that? We'd have to recruit more people, even though we've gotten rid of the backend site staff.

At some point, do we look like BT? Some odd hybrid of it? What about legal actions? At some point a large uptick of such activity on our site will get noticed. We're not in any position to laugh at legal action. We can't afford it, despite any implication otherwise. A serious enough company wouldn't have to directly shut us down or take us to court....but they could make it very difficult for the site regardless. That's what happened with Media Factory back in the day, and it was a primary contributor toward the decline of the torrent site.

Obviously none of us has a crystal ball, but it's not just our job to consider the here and now. We also have to try and think ahead a bit.

The typical community member has no reason to balance questions like this with the desire to acquire/consume/discuss their content. But as the team tasked with moderating and operating the site, we do.

I hate to be blunt, but no translation group or individual is a special snowflake. You're not rockstars. If anyone from "the scene" calls it quits, someone else will pick up where they left off. Most people aren't cut out for the long haul. It requires a lot of effort and dedication to work for free. I speak from personal experience on that. It's nice to get thanked, but to expect or even thrive off of it....well, it's good to get the occasional boost in motivation when you're down, but if your ultimate motivation isn't for the love of the project, even if no one else seems to care, you won't last long.

[Marcus H.]

I hate to be blunt, but no translation group or individual is a special snowflake. You're not rockstars. If anyone from "the scene" calls it quits, someone else will pick up where they left off. Most people aren't cut out for the long haul. It requires a lot of effort and dedication to work for free. I speak from personal experience on that. It's nice to get thanked, but to expect or even thrive off of it....well, it's good to get the occasional boost in motivation when you're down, but if your ultimate motivation isn't for the love of the project, even if no one else seems to care, you won't last long.

Well, that's the freaking point of fan translations. In its essence, it's about a group of fans who want others to enjoy a particular anime or manga series by providing translations, from making subtitles in fat yellow fonts to spending hours cleaning and typesetting dialogue thru Photoshop. I know how it feels to be a fan translator because I and a few strangers on the Internet are working on one at the moment. People can just take your translations and leave without a single thank you. And that doesn't matter anyway, because at the end of the day, you just gave this series new fans, and that would possibly mean more copies to import. This is probably one thing that "the scene" always overlooks.

[Reckoner]

Yes. I think you both make an excellent case for why the moderators don't want to do it (Not that you guys aren't part of the community! ), but from the user perspective it's a bit harder to see what they get of the situation.

I'm not trying to make light of the implications of even half-way embracing this new community, but the argument appears to me to be that the rule exists to make the moderators job easier. Not that there's anything wrong with this inherently. You guys do plenty of good work and there's only so much we can expect from people who do this for no real reward.

Originally Posted by Solace

Obviously none of us has a crystal ball, but it's not just our job to consider the here and now. We also have to try and think ahead a bit.

The typical community member has no reason to balance questions like this with the desire to acquire/consume/discuss their content. But as the team tasked with moderating and operating the site, we do.

And yeah, this basically illustrates what I'm saying above.


-------

There is no denying that such a change in direction for the website could potentially result in a bunch of work for the moderators. If legal troubles do arise, then it can become cumbersome to deal with it. The community has everything to gain while the moderators only gain more headaches. Moderators absolutely have reason to think the trouble is not worth it for them, and while this is completely fair, it still does not answer the question that keeps being asked here in that... Is there any reason you think the community itself does not benefit from it?

Again, from what I can tell... The main two reasons seem to be:

1. One liner meta posts clogging up threads (Low quality discussion).
2. Consistency of rules (Users will experience less ambiguity in trying to navigate the site's rules)

I don't think (2) is worth commenting any further than others already have. As for (1), well I don't think it would be a significant departure from the current philosophy of AS if we allow people to express thanks so long as there exists other content in the post. Say for example a user reads the current newest translation of some LN and wants to comment on the LN, but somewhere in the post also wants to express thanks to the translator. I don't think this would represent a departure from the current way users use the forum. Now the other thing about (1) is you may have to deal with people continuously linking and asking for the same content over and over again. Maybe a good compromise would be to allow translators to promote this content in their signatures much like AS treats bloggers, but not allow promotions inside the posts themselves? I think this also would be less cleanup work for you guys if there ever is trouble.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

As for (1), well I don't think it would be a significant departure from the current philosophy of AS if we allow people to express thanks so long as there exists other content in the post. Say for example a user reads the current newest translation of some LN and wants to comment on the LN, but somewhere in the post also wants to express thanks to the translator. I don't think this would represent a departure from the current way users use the forum.

No, this isn't a departure at all, actually, and is perfectly fine. Even the template thread said "No posts only to thank translators" (emphasis added).

If we did change the rules to forbid linking/mentioning fan translations, you'd have to be a bit more reserved (like thanks to <x blog> for posting it! would be out), but it's not like you're forbidden to thank people.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Now the other thing about (1) is you may have to deal with people continuously linking and asking for the same content over and over again. Maybe a good compromise would be to allow translators to promote this content in their signatures much like AS treats bloggers, but not allow promotions inside the posts themselves? I think this also would be less cleanup work for you guys if there ever is trouble.

As it stands right now, this is also 100% okay.

If we did change the rules as proposed, then we'd have to think about this. I can't make any promises, but perhaps there's some room there, as we already do make a limited exception for some forms of advertising in signatures. But still, you couldn't do "---> Get all your illegal fan translations content here! <---" or something.



And well, that aside, no argument can easily be won if you try to pit being 100% legal and in the clear vs. "what's in it for me?". Following the law isn't always in our selfish self-interest, but it's still generally considered a good ideal. And the legal risk is disproportionately weighted on the staff and owner in this case, so that's necessarily slanted. "You should take all this risk and be willing to do all this extra work because you love us" is nice and all, but what I've been saying all along is that if we wanted to accomplish this goal, there are better ways of doing it that aren't intermingled in the forum threads. That's the reason why this site was organized the way it was in the first place, with a separate torrent site, and separate torrent submission sub-forum, as I explained. It better manages the risk and the effort. So even if we did want to meet this need, we would change the method so that it's hopefully better for everyone. (Because I still say, even from an end-user perspective, it'd be much nicer if you could get a consolidated listing of releases with notifications, and not have to page through forum threads all the time, where conversely you have to wade through discussions that may contain spoilers to see which chapter has been released and where to find it.)

If we remove our piracy connection, it's possible that we could see other side-benefits for the community that aren't directly related to discussion in the threads themselves. For example, we may be able to get more presence/engagement from people or companies in the industry, who can't hang out here now. We may be able to get more official coupons/promotions/etc. If necessary, we could also host the non-shady/non-obtrusive kinds of ads or offer a way to donate that would mean that GHDpro doesn't have to keep paying for the server out of his pocket every month (which he graciously does). I don't know what can happen. But I do know that there are some doors closed to the community right now that may be able to be opened. I'm not saying that anyone should be sold because of these hypothetical statements, as none of the above is what is driving the staff decision, but it is something to think about. Being legal does have some potential side-benefits. And I still think, generally speaking, none of this interferes with people's ability to make a personal decision about their own morality/ethics.

[brocko]

On the signature idea, it eliminates the scavenger hunt aspect of complying with a potential Cease & Desist letter as well. But I'm sure that's probably already been taken into account, I'm just voicing it out there for mutual knowledge anyway.

If this whole thing is about simple linking (discussion on the other hand is a whole different can of worms) then I don't see what the big deal is about. Just alter the link by dropping a letter or adding a character in there somewhere, it's not that big nor hard of a work around. I.E: "I just read this at youtube_.com"

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by brocko

If this whole thing is about simple linking (discussion on the other hand is a whole different can of worms) then I don't see what the big deal is about. Just alter the link by dropping a letter or adding a character in there somewhere, it's not that big nor hard of a work around. I.E: "I just read this at youtube_.com"

It's not just about linking. Whatever benefits there are of being legal and in the clear are undermined if you're basically allowing it as long as people are speaking in code. That may fool a simple automated search, but it wouldn't fool any sort of manual verification, and both are quite possible given that this industry is not that big. Severing the link to piracy would be just like the threads for licensed things now: just talk about the content, not where you got it if it was an illegal source.

[Mentar]

Wow.

I take the liberty of doing an unfiltered "thought dump" here. If you are not prepared or willing to read it, please ignore this note - I will consciously put the unfiltered and emotion-laced thoughts in spoiler brackets now.

Spoiler:

It's nothing short of _amazing_ how easily you flick off criticism that has been repeated by pretty much _every non-mod_ in this thread. And that the negative examples are simply "hyperbole".

I know of at least a dozen people personally who have written interesting content (the kind of quality content you like, relentless) who got into mod tiffs and then said "f*ck that I'm outta here". Did this cause AS to collapse? Obviously not, but it sure as hell has hurt it. What would it take for the moderators to recognize that this might be an issue worth taking _seriously_? Not "I need to think about it more" lip service but "this is an issue that we should consider finding a compromise with our policies for" seriously? A drop of active members by 30%? A drop of postings by 30%? An increase of people yelling in frustration by 300%?

Remember what I said about "moderator self-gratification" earlier in the thread? This thread makes crystal clear that at least several mods in here have their own idea of how AS should look like and what should be here and what should not, and are absolutely committed to see their vision through. Whatever the community might think about it - who cares? We know what's good for AS. Nice if the users share the mod opinion, but if not, go elsewhere. And stop the hyperbole that the community might rebel on that, it hasn't in the past, and it won't now. We're the best anime board, so we can't be all that wrong. End of story.

At the moment I'm so hopping incredulous and livid that part of me is tempted to save the responses on this thread off-site (just in case - in the past one discussion about a related matter has first mysteriously content-changed and shortly thereafter disappeared) and post a referenced summary as an open letter on various anime blogs I'm friends with for some real 'hyperbole', but I won't because it serves no purpose. I don't want a flamewar schism of AS, I want the mods to realize and acknowledge that there's more to AS than their own isolated idolized vision of how AS should be, and that there needs be a reasonable compromise where this mod vision conflicts with the interests of the AS community members. In _my_ opinion AS is _not_ simply a piece of clay shaped by the grand visions of the mods, no. Take a reality check, guys. But if you decree that it is, then they should have the guts to come out and _openly_ admit it.

So I'll now enter cooldown mode. Calmer and more constructive summary in a few hours.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Mentar

I know of at least a dozen people personally who have written interesting content (the kind of quality content you like, relentless) who got into mod tiffs and then said "f*ck that I'm outta here". Did this cause AS to collapse? Obviously not, but it sure as hell has hurt it. What would it take for the moderators to recognize that this might be an issue worth taking _seriously_?

I'm sorry, but you have absolutely no idea the true story behind these supposed situations at all. Most of the "mod tiffs" happen in private as a result of a long history of infractions and interactions with many staff members about repeated behaviour over a long period of time. Do you think someone who feels wronged is going to truly tell the whole story and present a fair and balanced recalling of the entire history that led to the situation that finally pissed them off?

And here you are basically doing the same thing: making this insinuation of wrong doing without any actual evidence, which implies to everyone else in the thread that you know all sorts of true stories of the evils that go on behind the scenes, but you don't. And it's convenient for you because the staff have a policy of not revealing private conversations with members, so we'll never have a chance to tell "our side of the story".

You have no fucking idea how many hours I personally spend aggravating over every situation that causes tension or disagreement among people on this forum, including this very thread. And I'm sorry but, consider this your public and final warning: we won't allow these sorts of slimy unjustified accusations to be posted on this site. I've been incredibly open and patient so far, but now you've definitely crossed the line.

P.S. "one discussion about a related matter has first mysteriously content-changed and shortly thereafter disappeared"
If you truly want to deal with this, you can contact me privately. Where and what? Nothing on this forum is permanently deleted and change histories are preserved.

[DemonOfWrath]

So I feel like I should throw my 2 cents into this having followed this topic the last few days, as it's basically turning into 2 or 3 people vs the mods as I don't feel that's very representative.

Speaking as someone who doesn't frequent the LN threads (manga monstly for me), why should they get special treatment when compared to the manga or anime communities here, in that it should be fine for links and such to LN translations to be posted when it isn't allowed for anything else?

Because it's the current statis quo? Still leaves the question of why the rules are different.

Because it'd be hard to find translations of LNs if this forum disallowed them to be posted here? I find that very hard to believe. Trackers (not reader sites) for manga translations include LNs as well, at least for the ones I use, as I'm constantly filtering out LN releases and translation groups when checking for manga. There aren't the dedicated reader sites such as for manga as far as I'm aware, but following releases isn't that hard, and additionally would re-direct traffic to the blogs/sites/whatever of the translators.

Because the LN translators here would be drama queens? I echo the sentiment from my own observations that if a translator is just doing it, or is being mainly motivated by, a forum thread of people singing their praises then they aren't going to keep at it for long, and a dead project is never a good result for the rest of the fans. Plenty of small groups do manga translations without a forum like this supporting them, why is it so fundamentally different for LN translators? And the idea that some of them will throw hissy fits and ragequit this forum... personally doesn't make me that sympathetic to them.

It isn't like the LN community is small and fragile, here it practically dwarfs manga (if you compare number of front page threads on the subforum). All that would probably happen (imo) is a bit of turmoil as traffic for checking when a new chapter shifts to other sites, and as a consequence onto blogs and such where there'd still be the appreciation towards the translators, while the more in-depth discussion will probably stay here. There's enough of a precedent with manga, which is basically similar aside from the presense of large aggregate reader sites.

[Marcus H.]

Because it'd be hard to find translations of LNs if this forum disallowed them to be posted here? I find that very hard to believe. Trackers (not reader sites) for manga translations include LNs as well, at least for the ones I use, as I'm constantly filtering out LN releases and translation groups when checking for manga. There aren't the dedicated reader sites such as for manga as far as I'm aware, but following releases isn't that hard, and additionally would re-direct traffic to the blogs/sites/whatever of the translators.

LN series that have trackers are a different thing from the individual translators over at the Syousetsuka ni Narou thread, I assume. But then again, I have no idea how trackers work—I and Google are the only things I need—do they have the ability to pick up translation work that way?

Because the LN translators here would be drama queens? I echo the sentiment from my own observations that if a translator is just doing it, or is being mainly motivated by, a forum thread of people singing their praises then they aren't going to keep at it for long, and a dead project is never a good result for the rest of the fans. Plenty of small groups do manga translations without a forum like this supporting them, why is it so fundamentally different for LN translators? And the idea that some of them will throw hissy fits and ragequit this forum... personally doesn't make me that sympathetic to them.

No one said about translators becoming drama queens.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

No one said about translators becoming drama queens.

No, but Mentar & Irenicus have certainly implied that pretty heavily before in this thread.

At least that's the impression I get from some of their posts.

[Marcus H.]

To be fair, there's still that possibility. Personally, I'd get rather pissed if my efforts are suddenly outlawed, with or without a fans club out there to send their thanks whenever I do something. Of course, how they'd show that disappointment would vary from person to person, and how would we be able to tell what sentiments belie a simple "okay"?

[DemonOfWrath]

The tracking sites I know of are updated manually, but it doesn't seem overly complicated and a LOT of LN series already get updates listed on them. I'm primarily talking about mangaupdates.com (I'm not entirely sure whether or not this pushes a bit far into talking about how to obtain stuff illegally, sorry if it is!).

There's been several instances of people talking about translators they know who would make big "FK YOU" posts before leaving in some manner, for instance,

I know at least one B-T translator who is going to post a big "FU" once he gets his first infraction, and who is then going to leave. Then, the "FU" is going to be deleted, the translator will return to his blog (or simply cease his efforts) and everyone can be happy. Until people start asking why there are no updates anymore. Then I'm curious how you're going to handle that.

[Marcus H.]

Well, I do know from /a/ that there was a translator for either Tate no Yuusha or some other light novel series (was it Mushoku Tensei instead?) who basically did a rage quit in the series.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

To be fair, there's still that possibility. Personally, I'd get rather pissed if my efforts are suddenly outlawed, with or without a fans club out there to send their thanks whenever I do something. Of course, how they'd show that disappointment would vary from person to person, and how would we be able to tell what sentiments belie a simple "okay"?

I've never heard of any of the translators for the 3 other medias acting like that here or towards the staff ; when couldn't post their work here anymore.

And it's not "suddenly", anyone work on fan translations knows(or should know) they're working a legally gray area, and thus outlawing legal or from some site is something they shouldn't be surprised by and is a possibility at any time, it comes in nature with working in that gray area, imo.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Well, I do know from /a/ that there was a translator for either Tate no Yuusha or some other light novel series (was it Mushoku Tensei instead?) who basically did a rage quit in the series.

This happens. But coddling them to make sure they don't get hurt feelings and ragequit all of a sudden isn't really solving the core issue, because even if you do your damnedest to keep them happy, it doesn't stop someone else on some other place on the Internet from posting some scathing criticism and having the same result. If translators are going to last in this hobby, there has to be some deeper motivation than the praise of others, because people are fickle and can sometimes turn on you for you reasons you don't understand and never expected. While the work isn't always fun, you arguably have to get some enjoyment or satisfaction out of it, like the challenge, really want to bring the work to others, or otherwise find some inherent value that's meaningful to you. In my experience, anyway, building your sense of self-worth on the praise and estimation of others is sure to let you down at some point. I can only say that's a lesson I've had to learn myself over and over and over.

[kusabireika]

@relentlessflame: if I remember there is some tl who translste not for praise but for the love on the series

Well uhm I understand what your saying so for me there won't be a feedback or questions from me I guess what saying I will adapt the change

[brocko]

Well how many translators/series being translated do we have at the moment then?
Maybe it might be worthwhile if we can try to quantity the size and scope of the issue??

I'm sure it'd be probably continue to grow in the future under the current status quo, but at least this way we'd have a benchmark to refer back to, whatever the conclusion that gets decided.