Clarification on rules and moderation

[icantnotthink]

@Volphied
Big agree with this. If it's not okay to be racist, homophobic, bigoted, or just a general piece of shit in the comments, it shouldn't be okay anywhere else. We are here to read manga,debate whether thighs, ass, or breasts is the best, and whether your waifu is shit or not like a bunch of weebs, not shove our opinion about which <human quality> is best/worst in people's faces. It brings down the mood.

 

[Hounder]

@Teasday Regarding the pulled chapters, maybe there is something that could be done adding one more tab along with the "Chapters", "Comments", etc. This tab would contain links to the group/groups profiles who have contributed uploads to that manga. These would remain even if the chapters themselves are removed, thus allowing readers a chance to locate the homepages (if any) of the scanlators in case they choose to read them there. This would be really useful for those of us who don't remember ever scanlator-project combination out there. Also, I would make that tab able to be edited by the mods so that you can prevent potential abuse by spammers who upload fake chapters.

May not be perfect, and would likely require some work at first, and wouldn't contain any information for chapters that were removed prior to its existence, but it has its potential for use.

 

[Holo]

We introduced a "display unavailable chapters" option into user settings, so you can at least go to their comments and track reading progress.

 

[Narf]

I've voted "Yes, I believe that the current rules should be more clearly defined and fleshed out so that all loopholes are closed. Moderators should take a stronger stance on moderating user conduct."

Rules should be laid out clearly, both for the benefit of the moderators so they have a bit more of a handhold on how to moderate without the users being able to say that mod X is powertripping or mod Y abusing his power against certain users, as they can point to the exact rule violated instead of going off a kinda arbitrary "breathing room" ruleset. Of course there has to be flexibility, but most cases should be defined and loopholes closed.
For the users clear rules are preferable since you know when to expect mod involvement and where not, and it keeps said powertripping mods in check. Sooner or later there is ALWAYS one, no matter how nice all the other staff is, on any larger site. Seen it plenty, both as a user and as staff. They often start out as nice, relatable guys and then go nuts sometimes later, and many staffs are then reluctant to show them the door.

About moderating user conduct, I think in most cases things are fine. Being able to ignorelist users takes some pressure off, since you can always throw the trolls who are intentionally treading the fine line between moderation-worthy posts and accepted stuff off into the ignorelist. A few toxic cases I'd like to see acted on with tools like being able to revoke posting rights for a limited amount of time, but those are rare and inbetween.

As for scanlation group drama, I honestly could not care less as long as they keep it to credit pages or comments and keep it out of the actual manga pages. I am not a huge fan of all the "he said - she did" BS in the comments, but I can tolerate or ignore it. Personally I don't give a damn about intergroup and intragroup drama.

 

[tekett]

im just confused why people act like assholes. its illegal distribution to begin with, so we are privileged that someone takes their time translating this stuff. as for the delay thing, if everythings at a delay its still going to have a regular release cycle, just that its one or two days delayed. still going to be one chapter per time frame, like one per week, regardless of the delay.

 

[Viopera]

@PiakuchuKiller i wanna retire too, it been too long... haaaaa....

 

[Varrel]

Once again, bending the knee to scan groups leads to an irrelevant situation blowing up.
Removing everything because of some perceived slight is petty and irrelevant, because there are a hundred other sites people would use before going to a group's site if they've consistently shown that they do this.
7 out of 10 times a group getting sniped deserves it, 10/10 if they're for profit. If a group is slow, either get better or give up.
If you want to get paid for this, work for a publishing company instead of holding chapters hostage.

Creating more rules for this is a waste of time because anyone looking to upset people will find a way, and anyone looking to be upset will find a grievance.

 

[Jacough]

@tekett
I'd say the scanalators throwing tantrums and deleting their chapters because they're getting sniped are the real assholes. If they're getting sniped maybe they should take a step back and consider whether or not there's a legitimate reason for them getting sniped, such as taking ages to release chapters, shitty quality, poor translations, etc. and work on improving in those aspects instead of crying like a bunch of babies.
The biggest assholes though are the ones who are just upset that they're missing out on those sweet sweet donations. Any group that feels like they're entitled to money for taking an author's work and distributing it without their permission while making a profit off it while the author gets pretty much jack shit from it can seriously go eat a dick.

 

[kuusoq]

Moderator team that actually doesn't take sides(dispite all of them having their own individual opinions) and try to wash other peoples' dirty laundry?

That's, like, rare. And super awesome.

 

[beardymike]

I switched to this aggregator since it's ad-free and has a nice setup for tracking which series I read. I give zero fucks about scanlator drama or whatever goes on in the comments that I rarely if ever bother to read. If the comment section becomes an issue just disable it altogether, people that want to discuss chapters can head to the various groups' discords or places like Reddit.

 

[XL]

Where mah Nazi mod at? Oh wait this is not reddit turddit where the mods are special in the head and loves power tripping. Thanks based MD mods *bows*

 

[Odious]

I generaly agree with the current moderation view mangadex has implemented, except for one issue which user @Volphied points out. I think the rules about hate speach and bigotry should be universally unwelcomed both in the forums, comments, profile pictures and banners. I dont see why you would need an exception to this rule. Is this loophole an deliberate implication? If so i hope that the mangadex staff can adress this issue, and protect the users and moreso the dignity of the mangadex staff and community from the blatant display of malicious views as seen on the rapeman scans goup banner.

 

[BzzBzz]

Pfff, why bother about clarification? Just add to the end of rules something like...

Any user abusing any loopholes (intended or not) will get punished according to severity. The appeal is not accepted.

Problem solved.

 

[tetsujin307]

As a reader, I think I probably spend about 98% of my time reading and 2% either reading announcements, checking a comment section if I didn't understand something in the chapter, or really interested to see what people's takes are on a particular event. I basically skip over any sort of flame wars or other trolling behaviors/credit pages I see. As such, I voted #2, because the current level of moderation has not affected my usability of the site. Since MD caters to so many different people, I think having some ambiguity to the rules isn't the worst thing; it allows some flexibility by the staff to adjudicate various issues. I'm sure that as a staff, if there's a rule or point that everyone on team feels strongly enough about or that user feedback requires, it'll be clarified in the rules section and explained in a fair and just manner.

Kudos to the fact you're willing to open this discussion to your general audience! Keep up the great work!

 

[Yamibi]

I like how mangadex is handling moderation till now and I support your stance on it. Voted 2nd option and I was so glad so many people feel same as me:)

 

[Pokari]

So, while I voted, "Yes", in my case I actually mean that some of the rules could stand to be judiciously fleshed out as problems become more apparent: "Closing all loopholes" is of course nonsense and impossible (unless you narrow it down to one rule: "don't use the site" :'p).

But the poll didn't have a fine gradation of options, so...

The level of moderation on the other hand has seemed okay-ish, though I haven't seen many instances where it seriously gets put to the test. I could stand for the leash to be a little tighter; sometimes I feel like it's allowed for people be generically assholes just a little too much—though we haven't had the moderated-comment policy long enough for me to have an opinion on whether that's changed things, so maybe we're already good? Not sure.

 

[Jacough]

@Odious

I think the rules about hate speach and bigotry should be universally unwelcomed both in the forums, comments, profile pictures and banners.

Nah. From my experience when sites start creating rules regarding that shit they tend to quickly spiral down into hugboxes where they're pressured to censor anything that might trigger some moron. Just stick to the basics: i.e. let everyone laugh at the retards who scream legitimate hate speech or desperately throw out racial slurs in the hopes of offending someone and tell them to fuck off to /pol/ or whatever. The way I see it, if you're legitimately getting offended by someone calling you some kind of racial or sexual slur on the internet instead of laughing it off due to the fact that it's probably just some 13 year old dipshit throwing out words his mommy told him he should never call anyone, you'd better unplug your modem and give your computer a salt water bath because there's no way in hell you're going to be able to browse the internet without being deeply offended.

 

[Ashi]

Well, I voted "Yes" first and then read the post to find near the bottom that it's about user conduct. Too late to change my vote, but now I would've chosen the first "No". If someone lacks common sense, then they're going to still abuse the rules, regardless of there being no loopholes. But it would be nice to get a rewrite of rules 1.9 & 1.9.1 for example – rules state one thing and a mod wrote to me something else. I still didn't get a clarification and dunno what's right ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[PantsMan]

I'm in favor of clarifying the rules better for the sake of improving moderation quality, when necessary; so a little bit of A ) and C ). While MD's been lucky to not have many incidents (with the fault generally lying on the scanlator's end) so far, in my personal opinion I've found the way a particular mod handled those situations to be less than stellar. Rather than adding rules, I think simply clarifying and "trimming the fat" from them will help make moderation easier (if not even more relaxed), as you could more easily defer to them without getting too deep into case-by-case personal arguments.

I have no complaints regarding the already pretty lax day-to-day moderation of comment sections and scanned titles, so props and definitely keep that up.

@ossein
I'm partially with you: a series picked up without anyone's consent is far better than one with dead scanlations. That being said, I don't really mind sniping as long as there's still an acceptable degree of scan and translation quality. Other aggregators are chock-full with sandpaper-looking, Chinese to English-translated chapters just because they were released a day earlier. Then again it's always exclusively something that happens with super-popular or recently adapted series, so it's hardly a widespread issue.

I'm also with you in that I'm not convinced about prioritizing the demands of scanlators over those of MD users too much, but I understand that's always been a bit this website's aim. I think the compromise the staff have tried to strike between the two, while not perfect, is still the right approach.

@Jacough
This I definitely agree with, both in regards to scanlator overreactions and "hate speech rules". I also personally think the current moderation system in place here for the latter works (mostly) fine, in regards to forum and comments discussion.

 

[elfalas]

Personally have no issues with rules and moderating the way it's been lately.

While I've reacted in the past, it was because some moderating actions were taken against posts clearly and properly following the written rules back then.
I did speak up about it back then, in short it was about wanting either mods behavior or written rules to change or both, to get them to match.

Later I saw the rules changed, I've had no complaints after that because the rules fit well enough with the moderating actions I've seen taken since then.
(As such, everyone do get a proper chance to follow the rules since anyone can read them in the info section up top whenever they want, and it's clear enough about anything that could get you moderated.)


Incase anyone wondered.. No, I've never been the target for moderation. I've only been a bit noisy in the past about some moderating actions I saw against posts while the written rules clearly stated that those were okay. (Written rules that thankfully have been removed/changed.)
If you ask me, the important thing with a written rules page would be to give the person a good idea of what will get or is likely to get moderated. (Something the current rules do pretty well.)