Member
- Joined
- May 26, 2018
- Messages
- 242
Just wanted to share my opinion on this topic since the relevant threads have both been locked @holo @ixlone
I think it would be a great idea if Mangadex could become legit in the future and pay fan translators on a commissioned basis. I honestly feel kind of bad with my lack of support towards the anime/manga industry right now. I don't really want overpriced blu-rays from Japan since I like to have the files on my computer, don't want to buy raw manga from there since I don't speak Japanese (yet) and don't want to purchase western equivalents where little money goes back to the creators in Japan.
This kinda ties in with why I refuse to use Crunchyroll, partly because I'm old enough to know where they come from (garbage owners stealing fansubs, pretending it's their own content and selling it for money) while also giving very little of the users' subscriptions back to Japanese creators. I think I've heard that a seasonal license for a show is roughly 10k (and less for the short ones obviously) and they claim that they give extra to popular shows (but they refuse to tell you exactly how much, presumably because it's peanuts) but let's be generous and assume they give 20k for every regular show and let's say they do 30 shows a season. Crunchyroll has 2 million paying users and a sub costs 6.66$ a month but since it changes on the region lets say it's 5$ per person.
This gives them
10.000.000$ month for servers, programmers, translator, quality checkers, taxes etc
200.000$ a month going to Japan
Even if you factor in the costs, the fact that 2% (or less than 5% even while doing a very generous estimation) of the money you're paying goes to supporting the creators in Japan is absolutely unacceptable as a consumer wanting to support the industry. And it's not like I couldn't afford the subscription, I throw roughly 50$ a month on random people at Patreon, Twitch and Paypal that I care a hell of a lot less about then anime/manga, but the problem is a lack of good alternatives for people like me.
Whoever said that piracy is a service problem rather than a monetary one spoke some damn true words. The reason piracy is loosing market shares in western shows, music and computer games is due to companies like Netflix, Spotify and Steam giving way better service to the consumers than we used to have and outcompeting pirates. We still lack something like this for manga though and while we have Crunchyroll for anime they still kinda fall short partly due to being scumbags but also that 99% of us got anime through piracy to begin with and they don't offer a better service unless you want to stream shit on your phone (which I personally don't because I feel it's detrimental to the experience and you can only watch a show once).
So as my concluding thoughts I'd love to have a (good) option to support the manga industry by shilling out 5~10$ a month but I want to stress the importance of transparency, service satisfaction and keeping a decentralized model for translation which is what created our community to begin with.
When it comes to transparency it's just that I and many others would want to know what our funding is going to, that you either have a hard line saying you take a 30% cut of income to pay wages/costs/profit margin while the rest goes to Japan or just be transparent about the cost/income aspect so we can reaffirm that our money goes to proper things and how much goes to what. I believe that a good idea would be start out with the latter model (while the profit margin is low) and once you've got a lot of paying users you could switch to the first model. Even if you don't make as much potential profits in the short-term by limiting yourself to a 30% cut you'll make up for it in the long-term since the company will have better growth due to being viewed in a more positive light and have more Japanese license holders jump at the opportunity of listing their series here, thus giving customers a better service which also helps grow the platform.
As for service satisfaction I think there's a core points that are important to keep. Two points that I think we all can agree on is which are simple to get is to not censor the series you're doing or over-localize it and keep it as true as possible to the original and to remain politically averse as a company. I'm sure that me and others would love to support companies with the same core values as ourselves but would also hate to support them if they start supporting things we strongly disagree with, thus I think the best middle-ground is to not get politically involved at all. If I'm to argue with moderators/people I'm paying money to every month I'd rather it be about flat breasts versus big breasts rather than which system of governance we should have and the view on the individual in society.
Lastly for keeping a decentralized model I think it's important to keep the barriers between fans and scanlators low and have them be paid on a commissioned basis for the work they do rather than some high hurdle steady employment for a inner circle, though obviously scanlators who've been doing it for a while with a good record should be prioritized when there's limited work compared to new people you're unsure of. As for concrete suggestions on scanlating itself, maybe have a trust system for every translator/typesetter and that the new ones gets regularly reviewed (and suspended if their stuff isn't up to par) while you also have ''trusted'' scanlators who've uploaded plenty of stuff with good quality and only gets reviewed if users reports a scanlation for poor quality. To summarize the model it should be by fans, for fans like the scanlation/fansubbing community has always been and not feel like a highly corporate service with greedy owners who don't care about the industry like Crunchyroll is.
I said concluding thoughts but turned out to be the majority of the post haha. Just some of my thoughts about how I'd like a manga platform to be run from having theorized on the idea for a while to entertain myself. It's probably still a long while left until going legit would be even possible so the focus for now should be to make as good a platform as possible and to grow the market share but I think it's beneficial to have this conversation as early into development as possible. If you guys have anything you'd like to add or discuss please do, I think that the more we argue about his stuff the better solution we'll come up with.
I think it would be a great idea if Mangadex could become legit in the future and pay fan translators on a commissioned basis. I honestly feel kind of bad with my lack of support towards the anime/manga industry right now. I don't really want overpriced blu-rays from Japan since I like to have the files on my computer, don't want to buy raw manga from there since I don't speak Japanese (yet) and don't want to purchase western equivalents where little money goes back to the creators in Japan.
This kinda ties in with why I refuse to use Crunchyroll, partly because I'm old enough to know where they come from (garbage owners stealing fansubs, pretending it's their own content and selling it for money) while also giving very little of the users' subscriptions back to Japanese creators. I think I've heard that a seasonal license for a show is roughly 10k (and less for the short ones obviously) and they claim that they give extra to popular shows (but they refuse to tell you exactly how much, presumably because it's peanuts) but let's be generous and assume they give 20k for every regular show and let's say they do 30 shows a season. Crunchyroll has 2 million paying users and a sub costs 6.66$ a month but since it changes on the region lets say it's 5$ per person.
This gives them
10.000.000$ month for servers, programmers, translator, quality checkers, taxes etc
200.000$ a month going to Japan
Even if you factor in the costs, the fact that 2% (or less than 5% even while doing a very generous estimation) of the money you're paying goes to supporting the creators in Japan is absolutely unacceptable as a consumer wanting to support the industry. And it's not like I couldn't afford the subscription, I throw roughly 50$ a month on random people at Patreon, Twitch and Paypal that I care a hell of a lot less about then anime/manga, but the problem is a lack of good alternatives for people like me.
Whoever said that piracy is a service problem rather than a monetary one spoke some damn true words. The reason piracy is loosing market shares in western shows, music and computer games is due to companies like Netflix, Spotify and Steam giving way better service to the consumers than we used to have and outcompeting pirates. We still lack something like this for manga though and while we have Crunchyroll for anime they still kinda fall short partly due to being scumbags but also that 99% of us got anime through piracy to begin with and they don't offer a better service unless you want to stream shit on your phone (which I personally don't because I feel it's detrimental to the experience and you can only watch a show once).
So as my concluding thoughts I'd love to have a (good) option to support the manga industry by shilling out 5~10$ a month but I want to stress the importance of transparency, service satisfaction and keeping a decentralized model for translation which is what created our community to begin with.
When it comes to transparency it's just that I and many others would want to know what our funding is going to, that you either have a hard line saying you take a 30% cut of income to pay wages/costs/profit margin while the rest goes to Japan or just be transparent about the cost/income aspect so we can reaffirm that our money goes to proper things and how much goes to what. I believe that a good idea would be start out with the latter model (while the profit margin is low) and once you've got a lot of paying users you could switch to the first model. Even if you don't make as much potential profits in the short-term by limiting yourself to a 30% cut you'll make up for it in the long-term since the company will have better growth due to being viewed in a more positive light and have more Japanese license holders jump at the opportunity of listing their series here, thus giving customers a better service which also helps grow the platform.
As for service satisfaction I think there's a core points that are important to keep. Two points that I think we all can agree on is which are simple to get is to not censor the series you're doing or over-localize it and keep it as true as possible to the original and to remain politically averse as a company. I'm sure that me and others would love to support companies with the same core values as ourselves but would also hate to support them if they start supporting things we strongly disagree with, thus I think the best middle-ground is to not get politically involved at all. If I'm to argue with moderators/people I'm paying money to every month I'd rather it be about flat breasts versus big breasts rather than which system of governance we should have and the view on the individual in society.
Lastly for keeping a decentralized model I think it's important to keep the barriers between fans and scanlators low and have them be paid on a commissioned basis for the work they do rather than some high hurdle steady employment for a inner circle, though obviously scanlators who've been doing it for a while with a good record should be prioritized when there's limited work compared to new people you're unsure of. As for concrete suggestions on scanlating itself, maybe have a trust system for every translator/typesetter and that the new ones gets regularly reviewed (and suspended if their stuff isn't up to par) while you also have ''trusted'' scanlators who've uploaded plenty of stuff with good quality and only gets reviewed if users reports a scanlation for poor quality. To summarize the model it should be by fans, for fans like the scanlation/fansubbing community has always been and not feel like a highly corporate service with greedy owners who don't care about the industry like Crunchyroll is.
I said concluding thoughts but turned out to be the majority of the post haha. Just some of my thoughts about how I'd like a manga platform to be run from having theorized on the idea for a while to entertain myself. It's probably still a long while left until going legit would be even possible so the focus for now should be to make as good a platform as possible and to grow the market share but I think it's beneficial to have this conversation as early into development as possible. If you guys have anything you'd like to add or discuss please do, I think that the more we argue about his stuff the better solution we'll come up with.
