512 replies to this topic

[Grumpy]

I write this announcement about becoming private, meaning that only members will be able to browse this site (or a portion of it).
 
I post this with quite a bit of reluctance because it's something I wanted to avoid. Since pretty much the beginning, there have been requests to make this site private or to increase security of this site so that it doesn't become simply the source for all the other manga aggregates. But I have always said no because I envisioned this site being as open as possible and available to as many as possible. That principle is why, for basic reading, this site even runs without javascript, flash, or pretty much anything beyond most basic requirements--something few sites do today. These two goals of openness and security are both something we want to achieve but they are contradictory to the other and in the end I've chosen ease of use for the users. Times are changing though and it's getting increasingly difficult to maintain this site while being as open as it is now.
 
Currently, Batoto is undoubtedly the go-to source for hundreds other aggregates. Changes and additions made on this site gets automatically updated elsewhere, like this love of ponies (if that link stops working). People uploading here did not intend for their works to be copied everywhere else. Complete prevention of a copy is not an achievable goal, but making it inconvenient--creating a deterrence is possible. And that is making contents viewable by members only.
 
The change kind of scares me to be honest. From an administrator's point of view. Batoto is very optimized to be viewed by guests because guests make up roughly 90% of the visitors--and it's much easier to optimize for guests as they require less dynamic actions. When they all become members, many of existing optimizations made over the years become useless. I don't know if our current system can handle the increased load. I don't know if decrease in bot load will be significant enough. I don't know if it'll make more members leave us. I don't know if ad revenues will be enough to support the system once it's changed. There's quite a lot of unknowns.
 
I feel the change is (most likely) inevitable. However, the question of how it changes is not certain yet. I'm open to hear suggestions and ideas on this.

 

Few things.

• We don't really care about SEO. Bare minimum of it is sufficient. It has never been a big thing for us. So, don't worry about that.
• The easier the hurdle to pass, the less useful it will be, but more user friendly.
• This change will break a lot of other sites and apps that rely on Batoto to function.
• Opting for partial private may also be possible. Like newly uploaded are visible for few days without registration.
• Objective: No more crawly crawly on this site.

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Edits:

 

Well, this is certainly the hottest announcement topic.

 

I want to clarify something. I post this now and here not because I want to play police, ego or some stuff like that. If it was, I would've changed a long ago. I post this now, I change my objective as someone who maintains this site. I want to shave off a few million page hits a day. With great thanks to kenshin, our bandwidth costs don't increase that much with increased traffic. I still maintain my original image source nodes, so it's not a big shave off in cost, but it is completely manageable. What's biggest (always has been) cost is the HTML of this site, processing the pages that needs to be served. These run on farm of really beefy CPU servers with SSD and I'm currently looking to see if it's necessary to purchase another to handle the load. And one of my ad networks haven't paid me in 3 months. So I'm running on a red.

 

We have over 10,000 comics. And over 300,000 chapters. When 100 other crawlers think they need this content, some of it on a few minute basis (to check for new chapters)! Numbers REALLY add up. Humans don't do this. Because there is follows. You don't need to visit 10,000 comics just to see if there's something new.

 

There are number of anti-crawl features on this site already. All of which I tried to make that doesn't hinder normal users at all. It has caught a few real people using download scripts too. But it's insufficient; it's too lightweight. Pretty much since year 1 of Batoto, other crawlers have been using IP distributed crawls. Without further tracking tools for me, they're just not possible to track.

 

Hitting some of the new chapters are less of a concern. It's the deep crawl that concerns me.

 

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Edit 2:

 

For those saying just don't do it. The alternative is to shut down. Crawling is non-sustainable. Have to do something.

[zetsuravez]

so, that means if it becomes privatized then only the members or the people with account in batoto can read mangas, right?...

i like the idea of "Opting for partial private"
 

[themantarays]

Are you certain it will stop them?

 

Personally, I'm not a fan of going members-only. I only became a member at all here after a long period of lurking, and I feel that my involvement in the community would have been wiped away if Batoto was a private site in the first place. I don't really want to force that on others, and I think that batoto's sort of flavor so to speak would change, not necessarily for the better.

 

I'm sure you've put a lot of thought into this, and if you're making the announcement it's probably necessary. I just think that, whatever happens, we should be committed to being as inclusive as possible.

Edited by themantarays, 20 October 2015 - 02:46 PM.
(Rolling edits)

[Racky]

I think something like "last 7 days updates for members only" (of course if it's technically possible and useful) would be good. I have no problem with this Batoto becoming "members only" if that would help with the maintainance. Some people need to understand that leeching sites like "mangasomething" are cancerous and should stop using them if there is an alternative.
 

Edited by Racky, 20 October 2015 - 02:52 PM.

[Grumpy]

so, that means if it becomes privatized then only the members or the people with account in batoto can read mangas, right?...
 

Yes.

 

Are you certain it will stop them?

Certain? No. It'd be a hindrance. A strong one though. I'll also be in a much better position to track abuses.

[arimareiji]

I hope this can be made to work. It's unfair in the extreme that for-profit aggregator sites can behave as they do, flaunting it in the faces of both the scanlators and the publishers who are trying to bring titles over for commercial publication.

 

But what I'm afraid of is a repeat of what happened on a scanlator site I used to frequent. The admin was tired of having uploads instantly appear elsewhere with someone else's name on it despite his public pleas to the contrary, so he decided to make it members-only. I and a few others expressed worry that it was a good idea in theory, but unless he locked out everyone other than a handful of oldbies, leaks would be inevitable.

 

The admin went ahead with his plan, allowing anyone to sign up. Almost immediately, the guy who had been putting his name on the releases and uploading them elsewhere was doing the same thing. To boot, he began publicly taunting the admin about being unable to stop him. The admin was furious and mistakenly felt the community as a whole was somehow betraying him, so he shut down releases altogether.

 

This was on a relatively small site, with dozens of fans. I can't even imagine how to secure a site with a thousandfold that number of fans. Unless someone has technical skills I'm unaware of, I'm worried that I'm about to watch history repeat itself.

[Natureboy]

I'm a bit concerned about several (many?) scanlator sites that have a link to the chapter on Batoto for their "read online" option. Restrictions to discourage bots might also hit those sites the hardest--especially when they have the Batoto link in their announcements of new releases.

 

I'm also in the camp of people who read comics here for a couple years before joining the site. Not sure whether I would have joined the first time I visited. I later joined (1) to participate in the forums, and (2) to supplement my latest chapter bookmarking system with Batoto follows. For me, follows here make it more feasible to actively read more than a couple dozen titles. (Reduced my bias toward reading only complete series.)  Seems like a rather drastic change when ~90% of the (non-bot?) traffic is from non-member readers.

[Lami15]

I always come here to read my fave mangas but since I had no interest in posting anything I didn't think it was necessary to make an account. When I read the announcement I immediately made an account. I can't imagine not being able to have access to this site

[ku4eto]

Start promoting registrations. Like, put a banner on nice place, that has info about the pros of having registration. Then leave it for a month or two. And then implement needed registration.
Also, a simple header message about this change is needed 100%. Put it on top of the newly released chapters, and on the mainpage above all chapters. Just write into it about this change and that a registration will be needed + adding a link for registration. For all who are registered - they won't be seeing this. So only non-registered users will be inconvenied by this and they will try to register.

[Blacktrack]

I may speak a bit out of place here, since im not realy active (posting) in the forum/community, but i would like to suggest a kind of middle way as follow:

 

like the above named "Opting for partial private" & "last 7 days updates for members only" variant~

 

Setting some series or most of the site into the "private" sector / only member view section  AND  leave some (Top viewed mangas/ top series) available for "no private/ members" with the limitation of only allowing them to view the latest chapter/the last 1 to 10 chapters of said series

 

OR

 

setting everything private and leaving only the lastest chapter of the series/mangas (not depending on the language) for non-private/non-members available.

 

 

in my opinion would those the easiest way and wouldnt hurt many aslong they dont want to re-read the complete serie.

 

 

EDIT:

 

as i posted i noticed the remark on the scanlators. My suggestion with only the latest chapters available for non-members would still work with it.

Edited by Blacktrack, 20 October 2015 - 03:14 PM.

[felipipeXD]

i was thiking if its posible to at least to access the scanlations images server or even the login access to members to put an anti bot measure. IDK if with that you can kill the bots that steal images with that.
 

[Subbed]

I have two visions; an ideal one and a real one.

An ideal vision of mine not only agrees and supports this thread's idea of potentially making the content of this website visible only to the registered members, but even upgrades it and pursuits the idea of making the registration system invite-only. In other words, in addition to what the OP's idea presents, new members could only join after being invited by already-existing members through a for-that-dedicated link.

But then there is also the vision that is enclosed by reality. 90% of visitors is, let's face it, a relatively huge amount. I, for one, give a lot on activity. If it can be expanded, I would expand it and do what it takes to keep it growing or keep it constant, not see it fall. From this point of view, keeping the website's content public would be better.

However, what is Batoto? It is a website that persuades fairness. It is not an aimless powerhouse. It is a website that has a clear, righteous goal. Sure, one might argue to look for an optimum, but I believe it is evident towards which side we should be leaning when keeping the founding purpose in mind. We are here for the fair play, not only for the fairness from our side.

[maffa]

Correct me if i am wrong.

All it takes to register is giving an email address and click on the confirmation link. Am i right?

 

if so, how is it going to stop those who profit from your work? It sounds like DRM on videogames: the only hindered would be the ones peacefully consuming the product, while those pirating will be even more engaged to crack the protection, riled by the two drives, their traffic which generate profit, and the pleasure of overcoming an obstacle (low as it may be)

 

Either you think of going along with another security measure like a captcha at the minimum, or leave it open and bear with it. 

 

My 0.2€

Edited by maffa, 20 October 2015 - 03:36 PM.

[Viscoun]

Going to jump on the bandwagon: partially private, with new releases being delayed for non-members, sounds like the best option. Batoto was never going to be like the other manga readers anyway, so in a sense there's little point in trying to keep it so open as to easily invite trawlers in to snag large numbers of releases and then leave.

 

And yet, a member system is always going to be a deterrent, despite the fact that registering takes almost no time at all. People would rather take the easier option of going somewhere else, since most other sites are going to have a lot more scanlations, whether taken with permission or not. And I doubt that people bent on actually plucking releases off here would be so easily stopped by a registration barrier.

 

Ultimately, maybe around half (or less) of manga readers actually care about reading pages in full size/quality (often at the expense of loading speed), or how scanlation groups are treated. But then again, it's not about the unique visitors, it's about who sticks around, and who comes here out of habit. So my guess is that rolling out a change like this isn't going to change a lot of things, much least what kinds of people, some bots obviously aside, would come here.

[omnipotentcheese]

I think that going to a members only plan will decrease the number of new people finding and joining Batoto. That said, Batoto has a strong reputation among translation groups and among the community of people who read their works. Which may offset the negative impact of a required membership.

 

I would also hazard to guess that most of the people who use Batoto, are already members. I have never had an account on the other sites, but I made one for Batoto quite a long time ago and even donated, because I believe that this site is different. Everyone is sad when a favorite manga gets a take down, but I am glad that this site respects the authors, the publishing industry, and the hard working translation groups. Maintaining that trust is a high priority.

 

I think that enacting the membership requirement will make it at least possible to try to track and stop those crawling the site. I think it is a realistic and reasonable plan. I for one, am in support of it. 

[Aurius]

So, what are the things that can go wrong besides the possibility of decreased site traffic?

[omnipotentcheese]

Correct me if i am wrong.

All it takes to register is giving an email address and click on the confirmation link. Am i right?

 

if so, how is it going to stop those who profit from your work? It sounds like DRM on videogames: the only hindered would be the ones peacefully consuming the product, while those pirating will be even more engaged to crack the protection, riled by the two drives, their traffic which generate profit, and the pleasure of overcoming an obstacle (low as it may be)

 

Either you think of going along with another security measure like a captcha at the minimum, or leave it open and bear with it. 

 

My 0.2€

It makes them more easily trackable through simple heuristics. If someone makes an account than immediately opens hundreds or thousands of manga instantly, it is probably not a person. It is easy then to block that member. Potentially you could also limit their throughput. It's not invincible, it is something.

[udarnel]

Correct me if i am wrong.

All it takes to register is giving an email address and click on the confirmation link. Am i right?

 

if so, how is it going to stop those who profit from your work? It sounds like DRM on videogames: the only hindered would be the ones peacefully consuming the product, while those pirating will be even more engaged to crack the protection, riled by the two drives, their traffic which generate profit, and the pleasure of overcoming an obstacle (low as it may be)

 

Either you think of going along with another security measure like a captcha at the minimum, or leave it open and bear with it. 

 

My 0.2€

This is what I fear too... I mean, they just create an account and they are ready to go...  (@omnipotentcheese: nowadays everything on bato.to is already outside too, so they just need to connect to the last new chapter, not hundreds of chapters...) They are caught? they create a new account...

I’d be sad if making bato.to private would just hinder fair users; but I agree that those leechers out there are shit and should be stopped, if a suitable way can be found

Edited by udarnel, 20 October 2015 - 03:44 PM.

[zetsuravez]

Yes.

 

Certain? No. It'd be a hindrance. A strong one though. I'll also be in a much better position to track abuses.

i see... maybe i'll stick to my "partial private" one...
like a few days delay in non members...
and also, make some sort of ads to make non-members becomes members... more like encouraging banner to sign up and its perks in becoming a member...

[Grumpy]

It sounds like DRM on videogames: the only hindered would be the ones peacefully consuming the product...

The purpose of the game DRMs are actually not to prevent you from getting it. The purpose is to delay you. The DRM makers of the somewhat recent game, Dragon Age Inquisition, boasted that their crack took like 2 weeks to crack. To them, this was a job well done as people who couldn't wait 2 weeks ended up buying it.

 

It's not about making it impossible. It's about making it harder. And the question of if it is worthwhile trade.