remmy

Where Can I Find...? [Recommendations]
 

The Where Can I Find...? [Recommendations] has been moved to unsure more growth and grant higher expectations! Please click the link above to be taken to our new home. Thank you~

This thread is now an archive of all the posts and various recommendations users have made concerning novels, light novels, and web novels from August 5, 2014 - March 20, 2015.

also the design of their previous website : http://comic.naver.com/en/ was much better than webtoons.com

An update has been made and noted on the first post. Restored one title which naver does not own.

i don't hate Naver, i don't hate Batoto, but i hate this news.  

wait wait wait!that mean NO tower of god?!!

well, tog is up to date on their site. The problem is for those like kubera, that aren't up to date

So um... how much do servers in Tonga cost? XD

maffa, because it's a pain to scroll through these walls of text as it is when you're reading something.

going by that, it's also a pain to open a spoiler tag in every second comment

@ Seraphic Mist. Thank you for your elaborate answer. I appreciate it.

You are probably getting tired of it by now, but to talk about rule #3 again:

I have nothing against GIFs and Images.. you'll find I like a lot of funny ones, and have saved several. I spend hours at a stretch on Motifake, Imgur, lolcat, Facebook.. just for those funny Images. But the Comments Section was, you must admit, turning into Picture-Spam. People spammed all sorts of crazy GIFs just for likes and laughs, instead of using the Comments section like they should: For Comments.

 

Instead of banning them entirely - there was enough cause to, mind you - we just ask that they be placed in Spoilers.

 

Furthermore, the "Ten Line limit". Not only has it been increased from five lines to ten lines, based on member feedback, but I have also left the word "Approximately" in ther deliberately. 10-12 lines without Spoilers are fine, but anything above that should, if possible, go into a Spoiler Tag.

 

I'm sorry if I sound aggressive, but the point of the Comments Section is for Comments. Not discussions or speeches. All we ask is the ones above 10-12 lines to be placed in Spoiler Tags and you can have a 100,000 line discussion, you will be still following the Rules - provided it's in a Spoiler Tag. Or, you can move the discussion to a/the relevant forum... and eliminate the need of the Spoiler Tag.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but where I am from, a comment is not classified by it's length, but is simply a statement of the personal opinion of an author regarding a certain matter of whatever length of text. Might be 5 lines, might be 130 lines, it stays a comment as long as it fulfills those criteria. Just some food for thought that "comment section" might not mean "only very brief texts" to everyone.

Also, I do not think that everything above a certain length can automatically be called a speech or discussion. Here's an example of what I think is a great comment, but according to the rules as they are now would be deleted since it was not placed into spoilers (which would be a pity, really):

Isn't this exactly what a lot of folks complaining about how the comments do not give a good impression of how a manga feels to the readers want? Does it not give a good impression of what the author thinks about the manga? What is wrong with it that it has to be hidden behind spoilers or disappear into a forum where a lot of folks will never look at it? Just because it is a bit more elaborate and laid-out than other feedback on the manga? Sorry, but I will never agree that this would be a good reason. Does it preach or is it flame with its colourful wording or is it a discussion? I do not think so.

Hello there.

I just stumbled in my first warning point during the TWGOK finale fever and got several messages deleted (and one because it was 3 paragraphs long) and wondered what i could have missed to blunder it this way. In the midst of the strong emotions that went with TWGOK ending, several other people got their messages moderated, and like tens of messages, and some got pretty pissed off. In manga terms, it was a severe and unfair cockblock.

Now i know the rules had changed, and while i understand the reason, as svine85 said -in order to push people to register and use the forums, as i understand- i dont think it is a good idea overall.

Let me elaborate. 

You have two platforms at the moment, the forums and the comment section. They both serve the same general purpose, they let users to express their opinion. But comments are more used than the forums. In my experience, that means in the mangas i read and follow, people in the forums are 1/10 of the people in th comment section. 

Now since the comment section hasnt been engineered to work this way, Batoto staff amended a new set of rules, i.e. hurdles and restrictions, in order to force people out of the comment section and flock to the forums. 

This is wrong, and wrong. 

The first wrong is to force an usage of a tool the way you conceived it. The second wrong is to weaken a strong asset of yours in order to empower a weaker another.

The comment section is successful, for a number of reasons. It's immediate, it's the first place you arrive once the chapter is over, it has a quick box and a lot of messages you seldom have to navigate back in order to read anything new. And it's the place all people that finish reading the chapter arrive. 

It's like the kiosk in front of the stadium: once the game is over, all the people wanting to talk about it go there and chat while having a beer and a hot dog since they are at it: they dont mind standing, they dont mind the cold, they may also have a leak somewhere behind the bushes. And you want to hamper this successful tool in order to push the pub three blocks away, which yeah has a wider choice of beers and comfy cushions and toilets, by banning the kiosk to sell any beer and hotdogs: sorry, chips and water only, you want anything else go down there. This is shortsighted, because the first immediate and secure result you will get is that you will lose some people that came to the kiosk because it was the way it was and where there. They may or may not go to the pub far away, some will and some will not. Those who just wanted to have a chat and a beer now have to decide between moving three blocks away or going home. 

Coming back to the comment/forum sections, i only use forums when i want to rant about something reaaally specific: a single character, a complex hypotesys, stuff like that. To my memory, only a handful mangas fill me with the urge to elaborate so much that i want to properly rant for paragraphs (or bother about punctuation, for one): i mean, we are talking about manga...  Most of the time, i use the comment section as if it were the Latest chapter discussion thread of a forum.  And by what i see, this is the way most people use the comment section. In my very honest and humblest opinion, you shouldnt axe your own assets in order to make another weaker grow, but add the things the first lacks in order to make it even stronger.

If it works, don't break it in order to fix something else.

Back to the kiosk example, you dont want people pissing around? Put a chemical toilet nearby. Not only there is nothing wrong in having a comment section standing as a Latest chapter discussion thread, it is also a very smart move. It's a Batoto asset. Find a way to cash from it (well not -only- literally, i mean in a broader sense). You want people go to the pub anyway? Put some topless girls (or live music or a plasma tv or whatever) in order to attract new people, but leave the kiosk crowd alone. 

Then, if i may, i would oject to all the points of these new set of rules.

2) spoilers about the new chapter put inside spoiler tags: who in his right mind goes to read the comments BEFORE reading the latest chapter? If anyone does it, he is actually asking for it. If he is on that page, it is because he knows there is a new chapter to read, so he knows well that in the comment section there are bound to be spoilers. As i said, dont put useless hurdles on people: on the contrary, ease their stay on the site.

3) images and more than 10 liners under sopiler tags: i may get annoyed by wallpapers, but i love gifs, they are smart and quirky and makes manga reading on batoto a better experience than on any other manga aggregator site. Moreover, when i see a wall of text i dont get annoyed but i feel curious: here is someone who felt so compelled to write about something in this chapter, what did i miss? Once you put something behind spoiler tags you dont know what's inside: long text short text an image a spoiler from a raw or gay sex. Not only you miss the spontaneity of the contribution, you also miss its immediacity and quirkiness. I am thinking about some chapters in Minamoto kun Monogatari or Prison School, that under these rules should have been a long sad sequence of "spoiler - click to open". It's like the forementioned post game chat where people are forced to raise their hands in order to make a joke. 

extra) not only the usage of spoiler tags is hard on those who read, it's hard on those who write too. For such an omnipresent rule there should be AT LEAST a quick button in the textbox. Also, i feel that you should warn any user that got their message deleted: it's only fair. I spent 10 minutes looking for a message and then i asked just in case to the mod, because i didnt feel i broke any rule and couldnt think i got my message deleted. 

Wrapping things up, i would urge you to take all these new rules down altogether, and if you have a goal you want to reach thru the forums, i suggest you to seek a way to get there thru the comment section. I feel that the axing done in TWGOK section was damaging to batoto as a site (to be fair, nothing to say on the moderator -KidCongo- who just followed the rules, and did warn in fact of the consequences). The comment section is something your competitors dont have, and you should treat it with the utmost care. 

Cheers

I am not surprised that you have chosen to impose the will of the minority over the whole community.

I hope you guys have a lot of moderators.

The thing is, the discussion forums are used only for a handful of comics. And in all the rest, the comment section is used in place of them. Even in the comics that have slightly active discussion forums --take Again!! or Noblesse for example-- there's a greater number of members using the comment section for their discussions. The only exception to this [that I know of] would be Tower of God and Kubera forums and comic sections.

What I don't get is the sudden enforcement of the new rules. I don't think I've seen a single member complain about spoilers in the comment section.
Why change what no one has a problem with?
Discussing the comic, whether done in the forums or in the comment section doesn't make a difference, does it?

If it's about what the majority wants, I'm pretty sure it would be against a change in the system.
Sure most who posted here are for the change, but how many of them use the comment section at all?

More than half the members that do use the comic section to discuss comics most likely don't even know a place like this exists. Or they don't care.
They use the comment section cause it's easier to access.

A sudden rule change will bring unnecessary problems, IMO. Worst case scenario, we lose members.

Sure if there are a huge number of complaints against spoilers in the comment section [that I'm not aware of]
Or if somehow discussion in the comment section affects the site...
Then, none of what I said applies.
But otherwise :/ I honestly think this is a bad idea :|

the comments section hasn't been used as it was designed.

Yeah, it was used better. Instead of some three-line-review nonsense, it was literally the single most convenient place to discuss current manga chapters in the goddamn galaxy. Because you land right there when you've finished reading. You can talk about whatever you want, or if there's nothing you want, you can go with the flow of the conversation. Sure, there's some shit in there that I'd like to weed out, but if you just wanna protect the new readers, you can as well put "There may be spoilers up to the latest chapter below" on top of it and encourage forum use otherwise. If you actually restrict us to the forums, it'll just slow down and scatter the conversation.
I'd like you to be a bit more lenient with large posts and images, but if you wanna restrict that, fine. But I really think the current chapter content should stay.

Oh, but if you do plan to encourage spoiler buttons for anything and everything, you should absolutely require people to describe what's inside. That should be one of the basic rules. Without descriptions, the comment section is just gonna be a minefield.

...Alright, I'll admit it: until I saw the announcement on the front page today, I thought that each comments section was just a general forum for the series it's attached to. Oops. I apologize if my misunderstanding has caused the moderators any troubles without my knowledge.

Of course, I have no one but myself to blame for my own misunderstanding, but I do wish to point out many series don't even have discussion threads in the forums, so it stands to reason that most discussions would happen in the comments section. It's also pretty hard to move a discussion from the comments section into the forums, so the comments section seems to act as the de facto discussion thread for many series.

Now, I'm relatively new here so I'm not sure how everything was before the comments section existed, but I would like to offer my two cents for what they're worth:

1. Rules and moderation are unlikely to promote a shift towards discussions being held in the forums instead of the comments section. To encourage discussion in the forums, it is the forums (and not the rules) which must change.

Let us consider the hypothetical situation in which discussion for a series is occurring in the comments section, and somebody makes a discussion comment that I wish to respond to. There are, essentially, three ways I can go about handling that situation:

1. Respond to his comment in the comments section.
2. Respond to his comment in a forum thread, creating one if it doesn't exist, and then responding to his comment in the comments section with "Hello, I found your views <insert non-inflammatory adjective here> and wanted to discuss this further, so I made a forum post in response! Please see <link>!"
3. Not respond to the comment.

① is nice and simple, and convenient for both users.

② is pretty much the exact opposite of ①. Not only is ② a hassle (because I would have to make a post and a comment), but it is also a breach of netiquette regardless of how polite one tries to word it: not only would one be immediately requesting that everyone involved in an ongoing discussion change the venue for discussion upon joining it, one would also be indirectly requesting that everyone who does not wish to move the discussion be excluded from any further discussion.

and ③ is bad if discussion is considered desirable.

If there is a lengthy, ongoing discussion in the comments section, then lengthy discussion will continue to occur in the comments section even if there are rules forcing it to be hidden in spoiler tags. In economics, one often uses the terms "carrot" and "stick" for positive and negative incentives. Quite frankly, having to move an existing discussion and having to use spoiler tags are both "stick" incentives, but the former is a much heavier stick than the latter.

Additionally, one must consider that habits are hard to break. If people are accustomed to having lengthy discussions in the comments section, then it becomes hard to convince them not to use the comments section in this way. Of course, it would not be very constructive of me to just talk about why something wouldn't work, so I would like to offer my opinions/suggestions on what could be done to encourage users to discuss in forums instead of the comments section.

(As I am a fan of color codes, I will be using blue for the options I feel are good, green for the options I think are okay, purple for the options I feel could work but are kind of iffy, and red for the options I would not endorse)

• Changing the system so that, whenever a page is created for a new series, a Latest Chapter Discussion thread and a Spoiler Discussion thread (or something to those effects) will be created alongside it. I would highly recommend this, as having said threads there from the beginning would encourage people to use them. In fact, it would be great if this could be done for existing series that lack such threads, as well. This isn't perfect; in fact, I would not doubt it if the comments section's (unofficial, but de facto) role as a venue for discussion is so deeply ingrained in many users' minds that this would not have nearly as much of an impact as it should. I can't see any harm in this adjustment, however, other than extra work for the moderators. If you want to go the extra mile, you could add links to the Latest Chapter Discussion and Spoiler Discussion threads to the 'new comment' window. Once again, I can't see this being a very strong push towards using the forums for lengthy discussions, but I also can't see it causing any harm.
• Temporarily shutting down the comments section so that Discussions have to be done in forums, or not at all. This suggestion's greatest flaw is that it can easily backfire: if a user's venue for discussion suddenly disappeared, he might simply stop discussing, so this can result in a decrease in discussion with very little to no movement to the forums. Should you choose to use this method, I recommend doing so after implementing the change mentioned above (and also adding Latest Chapter and Spoiler Discussion threads to each existing series that lacks them). I would also recommend reassuring people that the comments section will return, and clearly communicating your motives should you choose to go this route. This is a relatively strong push towards discussing in the forums, but I just can't picture lengthy discussions moving away from the comments section without a shove like this one.
• Moderating the comments section and moving discussions to the forums. While this course of action has the potential to produce the desired effects, I would not recommend this for three reasons: ① it is confusing for the people involved in a discussion when their comments turn into forum posts, ② it is a lot more work for the moderators than any sane person would want to subject him- or herself to, and ③ I can imagine that a good percentage of people would simply stop discussing rather than moving to the forums.
• There are certainly other options, like getting rid of the comments section altogether, but the above are the ones I thought of.

I would like to add the caveat, however, that one should not expect lengthy discussion to disappear entirely from the comments section. So long as any form of communication that may spark discussion is allowed in the comments section, it is all but guaranteed that responses leading to discussions will also be written in the comments section... and a simple opinion could easily spark a discussion (civil or otherwise).

I mean, I don't think an exchange such as the following is entirely impossible:

Just my two cents.

The rules are simply trying to keep the comment section visually concise, informative and spoiler free for newcomers, and encourage(read that right, encourage NOT isolate) discussion in the discussion forum.

Why?

In which way would a comment section be any better if visually coincise? Why would it be any better if spoiler free for newcomers, since they are newcomers and thus know nothing about the manga so all those names and fact mean nothing to him/her?

Where is the problem with lenghty, verbose, flashy comment sections? I dont want to sound pedantic, but i really dont see the point, probably because i am a part of the very problem i fail to see. Does this keep people away from the comment section? Does it offend someone's sensibility, design sense, or OCD? 

I cannot see the comment section as a review section like Amazon's. I never saw any for any manga except one shots and the like. If someone wants to have a review for that manga, the comment section is NOT the place to look. It's like deciding if baseball is worth to watch by listening an aftergame commentary. It's not even designed to be like that.

Now, if Batoto wants to equip itself with a review section -brilliant! That's another asset for anyone to contribute and use. But the comment section is not that. And i fear that any change in that direction will avert people from the site. 

No clue how this started with me, but Ive always ended up saying Bah-Ta-To. It's caused many, many, many, many mistakes when trying to find the actual website.