25 replies to this topic

[Raine]

I know that there will be people who will disagree with me, but I was hoping the star ratings for scanlator groups could be removed. I mean it's one thing to rate a manga, but to rate a group is a bit...well, for those who get lower scores, it's offending. Baka Updates for example allows you to rate manga, but not rate groups.

We scanlators try our best to bring fans manga in English, and seeing your group being rated is insensitive. I don't know, it's just my opinion. I'm not blaming the raters, but it'd be much more respectful if the feature wasn't there in the first place.

Thanks.

Edited by Raine, 19 July 2013 - 12:01 PM.

[Viscoun]

that's true. most people would say they use the star rating to determine which release from which group they would read in case of duplicates, but the batoto rating system is, at best, faulty, and at worst it's just the product of people venting their frustration on other people. especially with all the needless drama going on with scanlation nowadays.

 

a low star rating could also discourage scanlators with the potential to bring out much more had they had the confidence to do so.

 

i understand batoto's wanting to respect groups by creating dedicated pages for each group, but the star rating system is still rather redundant. as personalized as the pages can get, the star rating system is a pointless, insensitive addition to those pages, and is a deterrent for potential readers as well as a source of undeserved ego-boosting for well-rated groups.

 

many groups get far better or far worse ratings than they "deserve". it's unreliable, so why have a system like that in the first place?

 

still, though... i doubt a lot of people would judge groups based on their star rating on a smaller reader like batoto. quality is a much, much better judge, and it's easy to see a group's quality just by flipping (or clicking) through a few pages of one of their releases. if it were a bigger manga aggregate like mangafox or mangareader, then maybe it would make a considerable difference. not that mangafox will ever make dedicated group pages, of course...

[Ral]

I think that, at the very least, users should be forced to give a reason (as a comment or something) for rating the team X stars. And the scanlators should be able to reply such comments.

I remember one of the MU's admins once writing a comment (on the manga page of our new series) about quality of the release (by my old group), saying that we did a poor job - when PMed him asking to clarify, he said something about overleveling, etc., but when I sent him a raw-cleans comparison (they were webraws, not much room for change), he withdrew his comment of his own accord.

 

The only "true" rating system for groups would be if we could rate the quality of each release and the group's rating would be an average (or something) of all of these ratings.

Since that's not gonna happen - I agree about removing the rating system for groups.

[Horn]

While we're at it, we could remove the user star rating as well. I seriously don't see the point of it.

[Raine]

I think that, at the very least, users should be forced to give a reason (as a comment or something) for rating the team X stars. And the scanlators should be able to reply such comments.
 
The only "true" rating system for groups would be if we could rate the quality of each release and the group's rating would be an average (or something) of all of these ratings.
Since that's not gonna happen - I agree about removing the rating system for groups.

I actually quite like the first idea. Although it'd be much better if the reader could file his/her complaints by emailing/contacting the group rather than posting it publicly on Batoto, you could say that some readers are just not that bothered to do that. Assuming that these comments will not be made public, how will the system determine who the "scanlator" is? There are also numerous groups that don't use Batoto, so technically these comments would be useless unless it actually reaches the scanlator.

However, the issue with the "true" rating system (yes, it's probably not gonna happen but I want to bring attention to this matter in case the idea is considered) is that it should be kept in mind that some readers may simply rate releases not according to the quality of it, but rate it according to the chapter they read (i.e. didn't like the plot/art/characters). Even if it states that ratings should be based upon release quality, it's bound to be abused. Like Viscoun mentioned, the rating system is faulty at best.

[Ral]

However, the issue with the "true" rating system (yes, it's probably not gonna happen but I want to bring attention to this matter in case the idea is considered) is that it should be kept in mind that some readers may simply rate releases not according to the quality of it, but rate it according to the chapter they read (i.e. didn't like the plot/art/characters). Even if it states that ratings should be based upon release quality, it's bound to be abused. Like Viscoun mentioned, the rating system is faulty at best.

Well, we'd actually need ratings for the "chapter" itself and for the "release" quality both.

[Viscoun]

Well, we'd actually need ratings for the "chapter" itself and for the "release" quality both.

 

a manga shouldn't be judged by its scanlator. it never should be.

 

but the problem is, of course, that a lot of people do just that. so yeah, separate ratings would be needed. but most scanlator groups at least scanlate to a certain level of quality, so ratings for release quality shouldn't really be needed that much.

[Daktyl]

Why would you rate something based on release quality??

 

If it was a bad-quality release of an already released chapter, read the other release(s).

If it was a bad-quality release of a new chapter, suck it up. At least it was released.

 

The only case I can see for this is providing at-a-glance info for which release of a chapter is better, but having all of those ratings on a single page is HORRIBLE web design, so if it wasn't implemented in a stupid way the reader would have to do some extra clicking to get the rating for each release anyway... making it all but pointless.

 

Not to mention the elephant in the room: hate rates. No matter the release's quality, people who like group X would rate group Y's releases 1 star... or if the person just doesn't like some people in group Y they would rate their releases 1 star.

 

Back to the original suggestion of REMOVING the group rating, I agree.

As a scanlator, I do this for the fun of it and I CAN stop at any time, stopping more than one series in the process. The person who would rate a group lower than the default of 3 stars is a person who has fallen into the new norm of feeling entitled to manga that is being brought to them for free by people who do it for fun, on their own time, not to mention the whole "scanlators can go to jail for several years because of copywrite" thing, no matter the release quality. People should start feeling a little more grateful and a little less "omfg this group suuuuucks".

 

Now on to the specifics of removing the star rating on the groups: that's actually probably hard to do, as the groups use the (user I think) API from IP.Board which is probably why they have the ratings in the first place (IP.Board just throwing them in there).

Edited by Daktyl198, 20 July 2013 - 05:36 PM.

[greenguy]

While we're at it, we could remove the user star rating as well. I seriously don't see the point of it.

please, i agree with Horn. 

 

not like i hate it because mine is low or something, it's just.. like Horn said, pointless. and i think it brought harm more than goodness! 

[Buroguy32]

• I agree too

[Giantess]

Why would you rate something based on release quality??

 

If it was a bad-quality release of an already released chapter, read the other release(s).

If it was a bad-quality release of a new chapter, suck it up. At least it was released.

 

The only case I can see for this is providing at-a-glance info for which release of a chapter is better, but having all of those ratings on a single page is HORRIBLE web design, so if it wasn't implemented in a stupid way the reader would have to do some extra clicking to get the rating for each release anyway... making it all but pointless.

 

a manga shouldn't be judged by its scanlator. it never should be.

 

but the problem is, of course, that a lot of people do just that. so yeah, separate ratings would be needed. but most scanlator groups at least scanlate to a certain level of quality, so ratings for release quality shouldn't really be needed that much.

 

I'll play the devil's advocate here:  Low-quality translations do definitely exist, and they do make it hard to enjoy (or sometimes, even understand) the comic you're reading.  Worse, it sometimes isn't obvious that it's the translation that's the issue rather than the comic itself just being naturally incomprehensible.  In some cases, I would definitely prefer not to read the comic at all (and wait until someone else translates it) rather than spend a long time reading its translations only to belatedly realize that the quality of what I'm reading has suffered from bad translations; but there's no way for me to know about that in advance without ratings.

 

I know that it sucks for translation groups (who are, after all, doing this for fun) to deal with that kind of feedback.  And I think that it's important to balance that problem with the issue of quality.  I mean, I don't go up to translation groups and say mean things to them, because (unless they've asked for honest feedback) I assume they're not interested in what I have to say.  And certainly, nobody has the right to demand anything from those groups.  But I think that the best-quality groups deserve some form of recognition for the extra time and effort it takes to do a really good translation; and I think that the comics themselves deserve to get portrayed (when possible) in the best possible way.

 

Therefore, how about this?  Instead of ratings for groups or for individual chapters, allow users to select one translation for each series which they feel is the best (that is, out of all the groups who have done at least one chapter of your favorite series, you pick one as your favorite.)  The one with the most people choosing it as their favorite could get a star of some sort in the list, or whatever.  To discourage drama, no stats more detailed than that are displayed -- you can see which one has the most people picking it as favorite for a particular series, and nothing else.

 

This solves a lot of the problems with the current rating system:  Because people are only "rating up" instead of "rating down", it becomes harder to grief a specific group (you can vote for one of their competitors in a series where they have a competitor, but that's unlikely to make much difference, especially since the only thing that gets displayed at all is who has the #1 spot.)  It doesn't apply when there's only one group doing translation for a series, so you avoid meaningless arguments.  It is also specific to a series (which tends to be one coherent effort) rather than a group, which can handle different series differently, and that discourages people from focusing on the group rather than their work.

Edited by Giantess, 25 July 2013 - 11:05 PM.

[Ral]

herefore, how about this?  Instead of ratings for groups or for individual chapters, allow users to select one translation for each series which they feel is the best (that is, out of all the groups who have done at least one chapter of your favorite series, you pick one as your favorite.)  The one with the most people choosing it as their favorite could get a star of some sort in the list, or whatever.  To discourage drama, no stats more detailed than that are displayed -- you can see which one has the most people picking it as favorite for a particular series, and nothing else.

If we could vote for the best version of a chapter (when there's more than one team doing the series), it'd make sense. However, voting for the "best group" for a particular series does not.

Scanlators come and go. Some are better, some are worse. The current "best" scanlator might not be as good as the previous one. They might drop the series soon and/or someone better might show up. What would we do then? Should we remove our previous vote to be able to choose a new group? That wouldn't provide an accurate account of which releases we should choose to read.

 

Back when MangaHelpers still had an online reader, you could submit your work under such labels as: LQ, LQ/MQ, MQ, MQ/HQ and HQ. It made people aware of what to expect.

Instead of rating a release or voting for the best version, I think that adding such labels in the "add a chapter" page, and allowing readers to vote the label up/down, would be the best way to judge if it's worth reading (scanlation quality-wise).

[Daktyl]

@Giantess

I actually would love to hear constructive feedback from the readers of any series I do, but there is a severe difference between that and people just bitching at you for low quality.

 

I agree with your suggestion, mostly. I'll start a new thread for it using Ral's input.

[Dafortminor]

I agree with removing of rating on groups, for example if a person gets mad of what a group does or drops a chapter or anything due to quality they just put one rating to vent out. That discourages groups in a manner of speaking. And plus its just pointless. 

 

A good function to replace it with would be a "Like" Function like the ones in our profile, if a user does not like the group they simply do not click the like button, but if a user likes the group they do.

[Shamune]

I agree that I don't see it being helpful.  

 

I also have noticed (simply from my personal wanderings of the scanlator pages, which is not comprehensive) that groups that do yaoi, and those who have a policy of not allowing their works on Batoto, tend to get rated low.  Hmmm, I wonder why?

 

There are very few scanlations that are so bad that they're unreadable.  And different releases from the same group may have different quality, because they have different translators/proofreaders/cleaners.  So there's little point in rating a group just for one particular series it does.  

[Verty]

If someone is rating your group low it's most likely for a reason.

Either bad translating or bad typesetting/cleaning.

Consider it a motivation to provide better releases.

[101010]

If someone is rating your group low it's most likely for a reason.

Or, you know, that someone is simply trolling you.

[Natureboy]

I'm ambivalent about the proposal to drop group ratings. There seem to be valid pros and cons. What the discussion did prompt me to do: Go through the groups listing and rate my favorite scanlation groups. (Aerandria didn't need the help, but another group that does great technical work and picks up wonderful titles was only 3-star.)

 

It seems to me, as a relative noob, is that the biggest weakness to star rating systems on Batoto are (1) low participation => small sample sizes, and (2) not much clarity/guidance in the FAQ, etc. about how people might use the rating systems. Note that, unlike the stars on comic titles, ratings for groups and people don't have numbers of votes displayed. Therefore you can't know whether a 3-star is from just 2 votes (say a 1 and a 5) or 200 votes. With comics, if you see that a rating is from a tiny sample you have some incentive to improve its reliability by adding your opinion. Not so much for the ratings for groups or members.

[Grumpy]

Best I can offer you is removal button and display of the vote on the group page itself. Because the rating system is part of the IP.C which is obviously something made by IP and not me. But the records, and all that backend stuff will still be there.

[Eien No]

Best I can offer you is removal button and display of the vote on the group page itself. Because the rating system is part of the IP.C which is obviously something made by IP and not me. But the records, and all that backend stuff will still be there.

 

The hammer of grump has fallen.

 

On that note, I'm a little confused on those changes. By removal button, are you reffering to taking back a bad vote? And as for display of the vote, I assume you mean displaying the number of votes that a group has received?

 

As for this debate, it's difficult to understand what a rating implies when the pool of voters is abysmally low. Take youtube for example. There will ALWAYS be downvotes on EVERY video. Why? Because people are goddamn trolls. Even if the video was of a funraiser for cancer research, you'll still get down votes. However, if the video is somewhat famous(or infamous) the pool of voters will be MUCH larger and there you will be able to understand what the consensus is on the video(if it's bad or if it's good). This applies to the group rating in a similar manner. Ten to twenty votes isn't nearly enough to judge what a groups quality is(unless they're all somehow downvotes), but for the most part it's not enough to make a sound judgment on the group's actual quality. When you start nearing the hundreds and thousands of votes, the group's quality will become apparent.

 

However, quality is a subjective term. To the average leecher(the main body of manga readers), quality simply means timely releases with acceptable cleaning and translations. The average leecher wouldn't even be too interested in rating a group and would much rather simply rate the manga they're reading. An informed leecher would deem decent cleaning and translation with few delays to be a good quality group(I fall into this category =p). And then there are the more demanding leechers who are usually scantalation connoisseurs that don't mind waiting extended periods of time for high quality releases(near perfect translations and good sharp images).

 

And what was the point of all that drabble that I just typed? Simple. To the groups who are getting high ratings: Good job, you managed to impress some people. To the groups that aren't getting high ratings: Don't sweat it. YOU know the quality of your releases better than anybody. If you take the time to QC all your work before you send it out, you know all the work that's been put into it. If you know you aren't doing so well, work on it. If you ARE and you're still getting low ratings, don't worry about it. People rarely go through group pages and the people who do are smart enough to undertand that they're the only ones who can decide if a groups quality is up to their own standards.

 

My suggestion to the staff? Do what IGN does.

 

There are two ratings. One community based and the other is staff based. The community one gives you a feel of how people feel overall about a certain game while giving you the total number of people who have weighed in their opinions(casual gamers, harcore gamers and trolls alike) and the staff rating is an (almost) guarantee of what to expect from a game. They also have a rating guide which more or less explains what their ratings boil down to. A ten, for example, is a "Masterpiece", nine is "Amazing", eight is "Great", etc.

Edited by Eien No, 24 October 2013 - 04:31 PM.