My partial retirement

Hello everyone! After much consideration I have decided to step down from being this group's temporary inofficial project manager and PNG optimizer. It's partly because school is more getting more and more demanding, partly because it takes a lot of time to run this group and partly because I'm not that interested in Pokémon Special. (I have only read volume 1-14 and I'm more interested in other Pokémon manga that I know won't be getting English translations unless someone scanlates them). I have also decided that I will not get involved in any more Pokémon Special scanlations. I will finish what I have started though (the Chinese magazine chapter mess comes to mind). However, I am very interested in scanlating other Pokémon manga, so I will still participate in such projects. I honestly feel like this is a good thing since it feels like I have hold this group back from reaching it's fullest potential. Sorry about that.


My hopes:
That this group will get stable management and a regular release schedule.


My fears:
That this big backlog of unfinished scanlations will grow, become a real mess and that the management won't improve after I quit managing the group. The amount of inactive members is also a bit worrying.


What should be done:
I don't believe that the model where most of the decisions go through one person is good for a group of this size. It's too centralized and keeping up with everything is a pain in the @$$ if there's just one person who manages the group. That's why the optimal solution would be to work in small, active project groups with interchangeable staff that handles one chapter / group.
Volume scanlations should be the main focus here. The magazine scans are oftenly not that great quality-wise and we are really behind on the volume scanlations.
Also, getting some of the inactive members to come back would be nice as well.


What is needed:

Uploader:
petermueller and Dreamingflower have taken care of this task so far and as long as they can and want to take care of the uploading that's great. If they at some point feels that it's more than they can handle he should find a replacement and teach the replacement what sites to upload to, how to write a release post and all the other necessary info.

"PNG optimizer" / "packager":
There is a way to optimize PNGs so that they shrink in filesize, but are identical in quality. I will teach a / several volunteers how to properly optimize PNGs for maximum file reduction. Photoshop is required, but no advanced Photoshop skills are required. Persons who undertake this tasks should stay active (at a weekly basis, at least) as long as they are PNG optimizers and be ready to optimize whenever a scanlation is finished. If an optimizer is unable to work for a while he / she should try to find a temporary replacement.
While PNG optimization is preferred it isn't a must, so if nobody wants to fill this position this group will do all right without it.

Sad to see you go. I agree with the idea that we should work in smaller groups. That would make things easier. See you around.

I will still check in on you guys, probably on a weekly basis. I just won't arrange stuff anymore, optimize PNGs and so on. Oh, that reminds me, I should share the PSD for the credit image with you guys. We could have a guideline that the typesetter of a chapter adds the credits to the credit image, starting from chapter 459. Also, I will finish cleaning the B2W2 c01 title page when i have time, probably in the latter half of the week.

It's been nice working with you. And good luck in your school work.

Alright, thanks for everything you've done so far, and good luck with school!

Thanks!

By the way, I really like aureole's sig. I think that we should start doing that to make keeping track of things easier.

so you're retiring but you will still be around?
I wouldn't mind learning the png optimizing or maybe you can just put a guide somewhere for everyone to see

I'm still willing to upload to the hosting sites. I'm also still willing to be a scanner, and I don't mind being a PNG optimiser. I'd still like to be a typesetter and QCer but I need a bit of a break from those since I'll be very busy between now and the end of December. (retail job ugh)

Manga Reader X, I sincerely thank you for all you hard work up to this point and making sure we got some releases going. I hope we won't let you down with future chapter releases.

And I'll be sure to talk to my friend again about at least becoming a QCer since he seems to have not mentioned it in a long time.

I'll probably make a guide to PNG optimization once I have time. There are some guidelines, but it requires some testing as well to see if the results can be done better.
I might make a guide to MangaFox optimization as well once I have tested it out properly. (MangaFox's quality sucks Master Balls, but there should be ways to make it less sucky, if we choose to still upload to that evil, shitty site).

Yeah, I'll be around and I'll still work on non-PokéSpe mangas.
Thanks!

no not mangafox... i havent been there for 5 years now XD

Believe me, I hate MangaFox as much as the next guy, but there are a lot of Pokémon Special readers there for some reason. We could maybe just upload a few more chapters and in the last chapter we upload tell them that we are discontinuing the uploading to MangaFox, why we are doing it, where the readers can go to read our scanlations and that from now on no more of our scanlations can under any circumstances be uploaded to MangaFox. I don't know.
What do you guys think? Should we discontinue MangaFox uploading? Before you guys make up your mind, I recommend that you read through these pages:
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=28000
http://animeloot.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/why-mangafox-is-douche-baggy/
http://betweenclaps.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/mangafox-criticism/
http://www.batoto.net/forums/topic/2096-mangafox-bot/
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=25232&hl=otakushop
http://www.batoto.net/forums/topic/5527-mangafox-co-how-noez-does-business/page-3#entry155671

I didn't know MangaFox was such a twisted site and did absolutely nothing to profit. Well, MF is going to meet its downfall someday.
Somewhere in the Batoto link, it says that the site just rips off anything we upload, so why don't we just create a water backdrop on the pages or slit maybe our group name in between the margins in the mangas?

I personally hope that they get raided, but the owner is hiding somewhere in China (and the company that owns MangaFox, MangaHere and TenManga is registered in New York), if I remember correctly.

I think that the MangaFox's Batoto bot is no more, I'm not sure though. That thread is from 2011.

I don't feel that comfortable about watermarking our releases. I don't think that would stop them either way from uploading it if they really wan to. I'd rather make extremely shitty MangaFox exclusive versions that we spread to MF if this becomes a problem. But according to what I have read they can sometimes remove manga on scanlators' request, unless it's one of their cash cows (one Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Fairy Tail, etc.).
This might also be an option, but I think it's way to complicated and not worth it.

Then there's the fact that we did get some support from the Pokémon Special FC on MangaFox when we started out. We are only against the evil, greedy company, not the fanbase, but whatever decision we make will affect the fanbase in one way or another.

Holy shit, that's a lot of sites (= a lot of ad revenue): http://www.batoto.net/forums/topic/5527-mangafox-co-how-noez-does-business/page-3#entry155671

I have thought about it some more and wrong is wrong. It's not right that they make that kind of money by stealing scanlations. I think we should do like I said earlier:

Manga Reader X wrote:We could maybe just upload a few more chapters and in the last chapter we upload tell them that we are discontinuing the uploading to MangaFox, why we are doing it, where the readers can go to read our scanlations and that from now on no more of our scanlations can under any circumstances be uploaded to MangaFox.

That sounds good to me.  Chapter 460 is the end of the HGSS arc - seems like a good place to stop.

Thank you for all your hard work, Manga Reader X!

I can only agree with this whole MangaFox thing, so yeah, it'd be better to do that.

Thanks!

Then there's MangaHere that's even worse. MangaFox might remove chapters at scanlators' request if it's not a cash cow, but MangaHere doesn't give a shit.
And then there's MangaReader which has been known to edit and I think also remove credits.


List of shitty manga reading sites

Known NOEZ sites (NOEZ is the screen name of the owner of these sites):
MangaFox
MangaHere
Ten Manga
Manga Yes
Mangable
MangaRush (dead)
MangaPirate (dead)

Shitty manga reading sites not owned by NOEZ:
MangaReader


I did some digging and it turns out that NOEZ makes about US$73,591.20 per month from his known manga reading sites combined. Most of it is coming from MangaFox (US$37,375.50) and MangaHere (US$34,065.30). That's about 883 000 dollars a year. Multiply that with how many years they've been in business and we've got ourself a manga pirate millionare.
Sources: Cubestat and Net Valuator
This money is coming from the free labour of countless scanlators and scanlation groups.

anyone know if mangainn and mangapark is one of those sucky sites like mangareader and mangafox. currently i've been going to mangainn or mangapark ever since i found out the stuff about mangareader and mangafox but i can't even tell.

I can tell by looking on their domain registration information MangaInn and MangaPark are probably not owned by NOEZ.
MangaInn seems to convert scans to JPG and resize them, so I wouldn't use that site personally. It doesn't seem to be "evil" though. MangaPark is down at the moment, so I can't look at it right now.

I'd use jb2448.info for reading Pokémon manga and I'd use Batoto for reading other manga. Batoto is a site created by scanlators for scanlators. It's HQ and offers scanlators much more control of moderating their work. It's the good guy site of manga reading and is widely supported by scanlators.
MangaTraders offers HQ reading as well and even allows registered members to download manga (registration is free).
Also, Batoto and MangaTraders use the money they get from ads (and in MangaTraders' case also donations) only for keeping their sites up, they don't make any profit of it.

Ooh yeah, good idea. I stopped going to MangaFox years ago because I'd been told they don't host licensed manga, then I later tried to look up some series and the ones I was after were unavailable (even though they were unlicensed in the US). But now I know how awful of a site it is - the management anyway - and I think discontinuing our releases there would be a wise decision.
However, based on the links you provided, Manga Reader X, wouldn't MF still be able to steal the releases from jb2448's site and put it on one of their other (worse) sites? Or is there something that can be done about it?

We wouldn't be able to do much about it. I wouldn't want to start watermarking everything and I wouldn't want to do this either.
We could include a note at the beginning of every chapter and we could make a thread in the Pokémon Special sub-forum on MangaFox and in the Pokémon Special FC on MangaFox explaining the situation, but whoever makes the thread in at least the sub-forum, might very well be banned. That is known to have happened with critics in the past. Maybe it would just be best to include a link to this discussion, in order to avoid a ban.
A final solution could be to hold back releases with 1-4 weeks every time someone uploads one of our chapters to a shitty site. Then when everyone starts whining they might learn something.

So Im back. Sorry for the abrupt leave. I had some stuff going on IRL that needed my attention. But im back and I have what I was working on before mostly done(well not the Mobilize stuff I was working on because somehow I lost the files, I think my mom or someone deleted them by accident). But Im ready to get back in the game and help some more.

Anyways i dont really got to any sites like MangaFox or Mangashare. Though I do go to MangaStream but thats it. So im not much help here. All the sites I go to are forums like this more or less.

The loss of the Mobilize work isn't that bad. Look at the e-mail I sent you and you'll see why.
So, how is it going with the other project you were working on?
It's good to back up work on Google Drive in a work in progress folder.

Manga Reader X wrote:We wouldn't be able to do much about it. I wouldn't want to start watermarking everything and I wouldn't want to do this either.
We could include a note at the beginning of every chapter and we could make a thread in the Pokémon Special sub-forum on MangaFox and in the Pokémon Special FC on MangaFox explaining the situation, but whoever makes the thread in at least the sub-forum, might very well be banned. That is known to have happened with critics in the past. Maybe it would just be best to include a link to this discussion, in order to avoid a ban.
A final solution could be to hold back releases with 1-4 weeks every time someone uploads one of our chapters to a shitty site. Then when everyone starts whining they might learn something.

Yeah, I don't want to watermark either, but that's a good idea with the linking to this thread as well as the possibility of holding back on releases.