27 replies to this topic

[Cake-kun]

Recently, I found out Gantz, the manga that had some sexual content for a while, finally(???) got locked.

Wait, why?

What defines "adult" material? Seinen is CLEARLY for Adult Male demographics.
If we are gonna keep blocking out material that involves Adult Male, just because it has a sex scene, I think this defeats the purpose of hosting anything Seinen and Josei to begin with.

Especially with fact that shonen manga and anime now crossing lines with bare nipple censorship, if there are any...

Seriously, please:
1. clearly define a line please with locking/removing contents.

2. if the line is random or blur, don't do them at all.

I vote for #2 and restore some, if not all, of the removed stuff that does not associate having sex as a goal of the series...
tl;dr I can understand things like Love Junkies, for instance, but Gantz, where the relationship the characters have is the leading plot of the series, and have it removed because it had one sex scene and several nudity scene, isn't that too much?

[OMGWTFBBQPONIES]

Batoto doesn't have the last word in censorship discussion if they want to keep their ad providers.

[Cake-kun]

Batoto doesn't have the last word in censorship discussion if they want to keep their ad providers.

Explain this site to me: www.fakku.net/

Edited by seyrine, 17 June 2013 - 02:56 AM.

[OMGWTFBBQPONIES]

Site hosting vanilla hentai; directly linking to it is against batoto rules of not posting pornography iirc.

[svines85]

Batoto doesn't have the last word in censorship discussion if they want to keep their ad providers.

 

 

Explain this site to me: ******************

what exactly are you implying Cake-kun? that batoto has to do what a hentai site does? or that if a hentai site shows hard-core pornography then batoto is automatically obligated to do the same, however the people who run batoto personally feel about the content?

 

i voted no, yes, no..............the people who run batoto have every right to run it the way they want to, not to mention, like ponies pointed out, how they have to in order to survive. 

Edited by svines85, 17 June 2013 - 03:05 AM.

[101010]

Your vote will not change a thing. Stop trying to sound important and serious when your actions will bring no change to the site. Especially presented in such harsh, accusatory and demagogic manner. Gantz was not removed just because someone from the staff decided that there are too many tits in it. Use the search engine next time you decide to start some pointless campaign:

 

http://vatoto.com/forums/topic/11691-no-gantz-chapters/

 

As you can read in the thread linked above, Gantz was removed because an advertiser asked us to do so. Without advertisers the site is as good as dead. It's that simple. Your lack of understanding of most basic things keeps to be quite evident when you try to compare Batoto to some port site. Not only is it against the rules to link to pornographic sites, as OMGWTFBBQPONIES explained, but the ads on their site are pornographic as well. Batoto does not want such ads on its pages.

[seyrine]

Explain this site to me: www.fakku.net/

Removed the direct link, but left it in the thread for argument's sake. 

[Dafortminor]

Basically somewhere in these forums as Grumpy explained it, the reason why some comics do not go over to the adult theme for some comics is because the advertising company would not allow such material to be hosted. If these adult comics were to be hosted then many of the advertising company that lets Batoto pay the server bills and other things associated with the site would disappear as to not following the policy. Grumps has also mentioned that he might incorporate another server that does host adult genre comics separated from Batoto, but that has yet to be seen in the future. 

[S.C.]

Hey hey, you actually posted in that Gantz thread, didn't ya. Then why didn't you just READ. THE. PREVIOUS. POSTS.

I mean, duuuuude.

[mhh]

If we don't want to use pornographic ad-networks (and we don't want to since it goes directly against Batoto's philosophy), we have no choice but to limit our content.

I wish there were clear lines. But this is life not everything is strictly black and white.

[xTech102]

I think the problem here that upsets the users is that it doesn't appear that anything is done to prevent the removal of manga that aren't really all that bad such as Gantz. It seems that they(the staff) just give into the demands of the advertisers without talking to them about the issue. That might not be the case but if people can't see it then they don't know. I know the site needs money but the staff and more specifically grumpy since he owns the site should be the ones in charge of the site and its content not advertisers. They should have some input of course but the site already does a good job of not allowing overly adult content and they should accept that and let the staff do their jobs of filtering it while they do their job of dealing with the ads.

 

It is also a problem that it only affects certain manga but not all of them with the same sort of content. Gantz did have some adult content (nudity in both a sexual and non-sexual setting, sex, and gore) but there are other manga on the site with similar types of content that don't get removed. This kinda sends a mixed message to the users about what is and isnt okay to have on the site. An example of what a user might think is, "If it's not okay to have manga x why is it okay for manga y to be on the site."

[mhh]

I think the problem here that upsets the users is that it doesn't appear that anything is done to prevent the removal of manga that aren't really all that bad such as Gantz. It seems that they(the staff) just give into the demands of the advertisers without talking to them about the issue. That might not be the case but if people can't see it then they don't know. I know the site needs money but the staff and more specifically grumpy since he owns the site should be the ones in charge of the site and its content not advertisers. They should have some input of course but the site already does a good job of not allowing overly adult content and they should accept that and let the staff do their jobs of filtering it while they do their job of dealing with the ads.
 
It is also a problem that it only affects certain manga but not all of them with the same sort of content. Gantz did have some adult content (nudity in both a sexual and non-sexual setting, sex, and gore) but there are other manga on the site with similar types of content that don't get removed. This kinda sends a mixed message to the users about what is and isnt okay to have on the site. An example of what a user might think is, "If it's not okay to have manga x why is it okay for manga y to be on the site."

Sorry but... We got a direct request to remove Gantz by one of our advertisers. So you can't say "its not all that bad".
We have no way to run our severs without those advertisers. We need them. They don't really need us.
And as much would like to do whatever we want, we are still part of society and need to follow its rules.

[kdom]

What I don't understand with this policy, is that it seems really biased toward male demographic. Batoto hosts many Yaoi titles which are probably more explicit that whatever had happened in Gantz and nobody censors them.

[xTech102]

mhh I hope you don't think I don't understand that. I'm merely stating how things probably look to the general user of this site. Whether you meant it to or not your post comes off as slightly condescending and it is not appreciated. People should be allowed to discuss issues such as this as long as they stay civil. Both sides of an issue should be presented for fairness and that is what I attempted to do.

 

The need for money doesn't mean the advertisers can't be talked to about their take down requests. The manga could be taken down to comply and then a discussion with them about it could be started with the attempt to allow the manga to be re-added to the site. It's not like I said the notice should be ignore and just tell them "it's not all that bad." Don't change the meaning of what I said like that. Also you're quoting of that line specifically seems to sugest that you think I would want that to be used as an excuse to leave it on the site. I simply meant that it was clearly allowed on the site at one time so someone must have deemed that its adult content was not bad enough to block its upload to the site. As such, its adult content shouldn't be bad enough to warrent a take down notice from the advetisers even though that is what has happened.

 

There are also other ad providers out there. I sure there are some who are less controlling of site content. To be clear I'm not advocating switching but that is an option that does exist.

 

The thing you said about ad providers not needing us is false though. They might not need batoto specifically but they do rely on websites to operate. They are digital billboards and batoto is a decently large one. No advertiser really wants to pull ads or leave a site because that is a loss of business for them. That's why when these requests come up they should be able to be discussed between the ad provider and the site staff/owner as I mentioned above.

 

I have seen people suggest reading the manga that have been taken down on other sites and while that works for the user a business/website that hopes to survive really shouldn't be sending its customers/users to a competitor. Altough this will be a poor and exaggerated example imagine if facebook started telling all its users they should all switch to google+ or something. The advetisers would leave the site and facebook wouldn't really survive. It would end up like myspace did.

Edited by xTech102, 17 June 2013 - 06:50 PM.

[Daktyl]

mhh I hope you don't think I don't understand that. I'm merely stating how things probably look to the general user of this site. Whether you meant it to or not your post comes off as slightly condescending and it is not appreciated. People should be allowed to discuss issues such as this as long as they stay civil. Both sides of an issue should be presented for fairness and that is what I attempted to do.

 

The need for money doesn't mean the advertisers can't be talked to about their take down requests. The manga could be taken down to comply and then a discussion with them about it could be started with the attempt to allow the manga to be re-added to the site. It's not like I said the notice should be ignore and just tell them "it's not all that bad." Don't change the meaning of what I said like that. Also you're quoting of that line specifically seems to sugest that you think I would want that to be used as an excuse to leave it on the site. I simply meant that it was clearly allowed on the site at one time so someone must have deemed that its adult content was not bad enough to block its upload to the site. As such, its adult content shouldn't be bad enough to warrent a take down notice from the advetisers even though that is what has happened.

 

There are also other ad providers out there. I sure there are some who are less controlling of site content. To be clear I'm not advocating switching but that is an option that does exist.

 

The thing you said about ad providers not needing us is false though. They might not need batoto specifically but they do rely on websites to operate. They are digital billboards and batoto is a decently large one. No advertiser really wants to pull ads or leave a site because that is a loss of business for them. That's why when these requests come up they should be able to be discussed between the ad provider and the site staff/owner as I mentioned above.

 

I have seen people suggest reading the manga that have been taken down on other sites and while that works for the user a business/website that hopes to survive really shouldn't be sending its customers/users to a competitor. Altough this will be a poor and exaggerated example imagine if facebook started telling all its users they should all switch to google+ or something. The advetisers would leave the site and facebook wouldn't really survive. It would end up like myspace did.

Alas, the advertisers are more a slave to the people who pay to have their ads shown than to the sites that they are displayed on.

 

As for switching advertisers, Grumpy has. Several times, in fact, after Google Adsense dropped this site. And every single one of them was strict on the "no adult content" front. The ones who are less strict are also the ones who pay less money and let more adult and spam ads through.

 

Lastly, Batoto is not a business. It's merely a site that grumpy runs. He doesn't want a profit from it, he has a job. He just wants enough from ads to pay for the servers so that he doesn't have to.

 

Really, it's a lose-lose situation. Either he goes with the good ad companies that pay more, but are more strict on the adult content rules and people complain about manga not being hosted... or he goes with the less strict ad companies that are less strict on the adult content rules and people complain (more than they do now) about the adult, spam, virus-inducing, redirection, and flash ads.

[101010]

You accuse others of being condescending but you yourself have the nerve to imply that we are not aware of simple things like, for example, that there are multiple ad networks? Batoto has changed numerous ad networks in the past and it's about to do that any moment now, as far as I know. The rest of your post is just demagogy and desperate attempt to ``come on top'' of some illusionary argument, which is just silly.  Finally I want to address something, which saddened me a lot upon reading:

 

I have seen people suggest reading the manga that have been taken down on other sites and while that works for the user a business/website that hopes to survive really shouldn't be sending its customers/users to a competitor. Altough this will be a poor and exaggerated example imagine if facebook started telling all its users they should all switch to google+ or something. The advetisers would leave the site and facebook wouldn't really survive. It would end up like myspace did.

 

What do you think Batoto is, some capitalistic corporation that operates solely for profit? We love comics and want to share them with everyone, or at least I do, and it comes absolutely natural for me to suggest another reading site if something is not available on Batoto. However it's always best to get the comic(s) from the scanlator directly. I couldn't care less about keeping every user loyal to the site.

[mhh]

I definitely don't want to be condescending, however I'm explaining the same things over and over again. Therefore I was trying to keep things short, to not get tl;dr reactions. I'm talking that risk now.

Talking about how things are seen is futile, because there are as many views as there are people here. So instead I'll try to talk about how it is.

Grumpy is constantly looking for better/different advertisers, and we had quite a few changes already. (And the current advertiser doesn't seem to have much of a future at Batoto either.)
When I say "request" regarding an advertiser it's really not a request at all but them telling us: "You violate our terms and services. You change it or we kick you out."

So why can't we ask them to change those or be not as strict?
It's because the advertisers themselves get those conditions dictated to them by the people/companies paying for their services. Now, you can probably guess how a "reputable" company that notices that their name is displayed next to, let's say people havering intercourse, will react and what that in turn means for the advertiser.

And yes, there are many advertisers that are probably less restricting, however they display things we do not want to see on Batoto. (Like pornographic ads or very annoying ones.)

And another thing: We really don't want to remove any comics at all.
However if we want Batoto to be a reader for all ages, that is not flooded with advertisement that is very inconvenient for it's users, we have no choice but to limit our content.

While Grumpy has been contemplating to have an adult sister site so users don't have to use other sites, he ,at the moment, doesn't think it is worth the effort and especially the time, with so many other adult comic sites around.

(If you want to try and see how hard it can be to talk to advertisers, try to find a person to contact (not just the form you can fill in) for Google Adsense who you could discuss their terms and services with.)

[xTech102]

You accuse others of being condescending but you yourself have the nerve to imply that we are not aware of simple things like, for example, that there are multiple ad networks? Batoto has changed numerous ad networks in the past and it's about to do that any moment now, as far as I know. The rest of your post is just demagogy and desperate attempt to ``come on top'' of some illusionary argument, which is just silly.  Finally I want to address something, which saddened me a lot upon reading:

 

 

What do you think Batoto is, some capitalistic corporation that operates solely for profit? We love comics and want to share them with everyone, or at least I do, and it comes absolutely natural for me to suggest another reading site if something is not available on Batoto. However it's always best to get the comic(s) from the scanlator directly. I couldn't care less about keeping every user loyal to the site.

 

 

Perhaps I could have worded what I said better so no need to be so hostile. I even said I don't know whether he meant it or not. I didn't outright call him condecending. I do apolize for my wording though. I realize the staff knows there are multiple ad providers and I know they have been switched multiple times. I mearly brought it up to list all the options available for the sake of thouroughness. Thats why I said I wasn't suggesting they be switched.

 

And no I don't think batoto operates for a profit but I also don't want to site to dissappear or have trouble keeping users. I love this site and manga. I spend most of my free time reading it because I find it so enjoyable. Because of that I don't like the idea of having to send users away even if it's just for one manga. Lastly I don't know what illusionary argument you are talking about. I was mearly adressing the things that mhh brought up even if he didnt do so in the best way and like I said I may not have responded in the best either. Such is the problem with text since emotion cannot really be shown as easy. Even if there was an arguement the point of one should never be to win or come out on top. The point should be to reach a mutual understanding on an issue and make a decision about it if needed.

 

 

Daktyl addressed what I said well as did you mhh in your latest post. I thank you for that. Also this is now getting kinda off topic. I'm not against you guys nor trying to attack anyone. My original point was simply that this sucks and that I believe most people wish more could be done about it. I understand what happened and about the terms are service thing now that has been mentioned, I don't know that everyone know or understands that though which is what causes these issues. I also accept what happened. Its not like I'm demanding the manga back or that the ads be changed or anything. I hope that clears things up and anyone who is upset over some simple misunderstandings is able to calm down so we can all get back to reading the manga we love.

Edited by xTech102, 17 June 2013 - 08:06 PM.

[Styx]

Your vote will not change a thing. Stop trying to sound important and serious when your actions will bring no change to the site. Especially presented in such harsh, accusatory and demagogic manner. Gantz was not removed just because someone from the staff decided that there are too many tits in it. Use the search engine next time you decide to start some pointless campaign.

 

Why so hostile? People just want to let their opinions be heard, nothing wrong with that.

[Grumpy]

Dammit. I made a long post and it disappeared after I accidentally hit back... >.< tl;dr version.

 

There are lenient ad networks and strict ad networks. More strict ones are already long gone out of our reach. And more strict ones are ones with higher quality ads and pay. We want to host many comics as possible while adhering to our agreements with the ad networks. It's a balancing job between quality ads and enough pay to keep the server up & more content. This is where we are now. And we do not want to host adult ads as we want this site to be friendly to all ages. It's not a balancing job we want to have. it's a balancing job we must have.

 

There is zero room for negotiation with the ad network. You can pick the ad networks, but not say things like "this looks fine to me". If they say it's not fine, it's not fine. I have to drop the comic or drop the network and it's a choice I have to make in a very short period of time or be defaulted to "drop the network", tho it's them who's dropping me then.

 

As for the definition of what is adult and what is not, check MPAA rating system for movies. It's generally same.

 

As for question of seinen vs adult: It's not the same. Seinen only says it's target demographic is young adult to adult males. Seinen titles are still open to all audiences. Adult only means it is illegal to show it to a minor.

 

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and io, chill.