Good Emperor Late

Even with the site closed for the most part, seems like haywire bots are still an issue for this site... I don't know what they're doing just making countless searches everywhere, but few bans and we're back to normal operation. I honestly haven't check this server in a while, so... it was probably at terrible speeds for a while now.

To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand myself on this matter.

Initially, I decided to nuke everything. Which is why I even told other admins to not bother with acct deletions anymore.

But some people managed to convince me to at least keep the forums up. So, it's here right now. Plus, I think I have difficulty letting things go as well.

If keeping Batoto as a whole was like managing a fleet of dozen cars, managing forums is still like managing 1 car. Surely, there's lot less I need to do. And I can do it with less vigor or need for urgency to fix issues. No one's going to be hammering our servers for content. It's tiny effort compared to before, but still effort. Keeping forums up costs too, again, tiny amount now compared to before (~$50/mo now) and I don't really intend to spend money forever on something people may not be too interested in.

So, it's up now. But if there's of high value to you, you should make a copy of it for yourself.

My response to Vela's status: http://vatoto.com/forums/statuses/user/11423-vela/?status_id=37181. I was laughing so hard, I couldn't stop my hand from shaking while I was drawing the door

They literally copied mangawindow site, and just replaced the name with batoto,it's just lazy. I have a question, can't they use the same layout as batoto?

Well, I own the copyright to the layout as I made it. It's also built on top of the theme that I bought/licensed from IPS theme designing company (IPSFocus). Lastly, IPS itself. So, they would be infringing on three copyright owners issues if they copied ours.

But there's nothing physically stopping them.

So... they can, but they shouldn't.

I'm not too surprised[...]

Batoto was just an image hosting site with convenient sorting and a forum. Don't be calling us names now!

Number of companies actually already worked with us and actually had another one that was rolling out before I told them sorry for wasting their time. So, I don't really think they were shy from being associated with us.

One company whom I was in contact with was super into buying it. But couldn't convince their CEO. So, there is a lot of mixed desires on their side too.

The quantity of batoto traffic + smooth transition is worth seriously quite a lot. I actually had the site evaluated with a consultant prior to approaching them. To a strategic buyer (like manga publisher), I was supposed to approach them with low 6 figure (for site, not just domain). But did warn me that the strategic route of selling rarely work and shouldn't get my hopes up simply because they usually don't assign a budget for this type of nature, even for large companies. Meaning, they'd have to reassign their budget to make it work. This was a super bargain though. Still feel like a big loss of opportunity for them. 

In the end, market has spoken. The domain's value is 5k and it's where it's sold.

Don´t cry because it´s over. Smile because it happened.

-Dr. Seuss

It's August, 2010. I'm watching anime at a friend's house, and he asks if I've read any good manga lately. I hadn't, as I was unaware of how much easier it was to find manga online. I had previously been using baka-updates to keep up with anime since about 2005, but had seldom used their sister site, baka-updates manga. The only other manga I had read online at that point was Berserk and Homunculus (from the now defunct Band of the Hawks.) I was then whisked away to a crap ton of different genres, art styles, plots, and communities that I had no idea even existed up to that point. I spent a ton of time and gathered a bunch of different sites into a favorites folder, and went to each site almost daily to be aware of updates and delays. It got to the point where I didn't add any newer series to my list because I didn't want my favorites to explode any more than it already had.

This was when I started seeing a lot more of the advertisements from groups I was reading saying to read (at their website url) and Batoto. 1 or 2 groups is one thing, but I was seeing 10-20 of the groups advertising this. In fact, one of the scans I was reading was so popular, he could no longer support reading on his site and started using batoto exclusively (for reliability.) I started reading almost everything through batoto at that point. Mainly, because my HD burned and I lost all of my favorites. I could recover about 40% through my own memory, but it took some time before I could get everything back.

I will never forget this site, and it saddens me to see it go. It saddens me that so much of the community is disappearing because of less fair, and even criminal aggregate sites.  But, I understand. As someone that has had to get up at 3:48 am because a server crashed, and you're the closest person to the server site to force a reboot, it's soul crushing. I applaud, in fact, Grumpy and the rest of the team for doing this for so long, and for so little in comparison to some of the other aggregate sites. However, it's still sad. It's sad when a group you enjoy reading disbands, when a translator moves on, and when something loved and cherished in your community shuts down. Batoto will be missed, but it's missed because we love it. Because it made an impact in our lives.

Thank you. For everything.

I'm "still" here, though I pretty much only started participating in the forums after the site died.

This is... sort of like my emotional refugee camp after fleeing the destruction of the comments section, I suppose? They have a nice, safe, familiar batoto smell.

So, who - like me- keeps showing up here outta habit to check for releases?

You should probably be made aware that this site is closing down.  Not much point in making suggestions.

Patient name: Bato.to

Time of death: 2018.01.20 - 23:00 CET

Cause of death: Critical brain damage caused by lifesupport machines failing

Figured I'd take this opportunity to wish you all the best, and goodbye. Thanks for your efforts.

Honestly I never used this place so much, but found some pretty cool manga here.

Anyways thank you for your work

Hey Batoto,

You've got me through a lot of shit and given me so many good times.
Thanks to this site I took up learning Japanese and spent an amazing few months in Japan studying.
I've gotten so much from this place and I just wanted to say thanks.

ほんとに、ありがとうございました。次の時まで、さよなら。