This week's poll is from deadphoenix. Have you ever donated money to a scanlation group? I think a couple of groups use Patreon. Although the question is specifically for scanlation groups, you could expand it to include groups/people that translate novels.

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: What is your main goal in life?
Choices:
Fortune (money, property, etc.) - votes: 817 (14.9%)
Health (well-being, strength, long life, etc.) - votes: 384 (7%)
Spirituality (religion, enlightenment, etc.) - votes: 268 (4.9%)
Knowledge (academic, technical, etc.) - votes: 632 (11.5%)
Power (leader, politician, etc.) - votes: 75 (1.4%)
Fame (celebrity, hero, etc.) - votes: 32 (0.6%)
Beauty (fashion, body, etc.) - votes: 28 (0.5%)
Infamy (crime, etc.) - votes: 39 (0.7%)
Relationships (marriage, children, friends, etc.) - votes: 642 (11.7%)
Career (desired job, high position, etc.) - votes: 441 (8.1%)
I am content - votes: 448 (8.2%)
I am unsure - votes: 1137 (20.8%)
Other - votes: 529 (9.7%)
There were 5472 total votes.
The poll ended: August 26th 2017

Lots of people who are unsure. Reminds me of a statistic that something like 80% of students will change their college major at least once, while the average college student switches majors 3 times.

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

Giving money to get raws would be one thing but how often are out of print manga scanlated? Funneling money into piracy is just madness so i take a hard no, I just don't want to.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

The vast, vast majority of groups that demand donations are full of shit.

They use public raws, use free domains, use aggregate online readers as their hosts, etc. and yet they still need donations to "go on". Yeeeeeah, no. They just want to be compensated for their scanlations.

Not saying this is the case for all scanlators, obviously, but it applies to the majority of 'em that ask for donations.

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-GGpX

I run Illuminati-Manga. You're welcome.

They create something you enjoy for free - and you call them "full of shit"?!

What's wrong with asking for donations?
It's not like they are putting things behind paywall and forcing you to donate.

Typical scanlation requires 12-16 hours of work per chapter.
Allocating that much every week on just pure enthusiasm is going to drain people out pretty fast.

Last edited by SinsI at 7:13 am, Aug 26 2017

"No, I don't want to cause I prefer to pay community back by doing scanlations".

What if scanlation is of a webcomic, and they have permission from the author - thus it is not a piracy.
Are you ready to donate to such a scanlation group?

THIS!
Nobody should pay scanlators, EVER. It violates almost every ethic possible.

Furthermore, no scan group actually needs money. They don't need fancy websites, they don't need bandwidth and they don't need to create an online community just for stroking their e-peeners. There's plenty of places that will host releases, there's plenty of great online communities and there's always facebook, tumblr, blogger, twitter, ect. in place of websites.

The only exception may be raws. 90% of scanlators get free raws online, but on rare occasions they need them purchased. But instead of begging for money, they can ask leachers to buy the raws for them.

Remember, most of the time when you donate, you're actually just buying beer for the scan team, rather than facilitating scanlation.

I call them full of shit too.

I've worked with several scan teams and finished numerous titles over the last 15 years, and no matter how they whine, actual scanlation isn't hard and rarely costs a cent. If someone is putting in 12-16 hours of work per chapter, they must be a retarded cripple using MS Paint or getting their raws from someone using a 1972 model Xerox to scan.

When you donate you're being a chump.

Successful Kickstarters for all sorts of manga and anime re-releases, (re-)dubs and so on have existed for a few years now. These aren´t done by fan/scan group groups though. International fans basically need to put their resources together for such things and get in contact with distribution firms that can get the legal rights sorted out and all you need to do then is contribute to the crowd funding.
Only established brands or creators had luck with such as of now but you never know where the scene will end up in a few years. The digital distribution scene is still the wild west.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

No, I don't have money to donate.

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[img]https://i.imgur.com/ERg8slD.gif[/img
[img]https://i.imgur.com/HphHlPh.gif[/img]
Tv Tokyo - Anime & Manga ~ MinatoAce

Of course, in all fairness, the vast, vast majority of fan scanlation groups don't ask for money to begin with. As a percentage of the whole it's actually a tiny fraction of groups.

Looks like we might have another poll that's going to get some people riled up.......can't wait

I always believed that scanlators created their scanlations to promote a certain title and/or artist. So, I think the best way to repay that effort is to buy the licensed title.

I have no problem giving a scanlation team encouraging feedback but I don't see myself giving them money.

I could but my father can see my bank account online and would start being annoying if I did.

I buy the manga that liked though to support the authors.

But translate is a work,no ?

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My perfect sentence when someone suspect me : "I'm not suspect, it's not me I swear"

No, at its heart, fan scanlations, which includes the translating and all the other work that goes into it, is a hobbyist activity, you do it because you enjoy doing it.......just like reading manga (or reading books, or going to movies or watching tv).

Some very small amount of groups (as I've mentioned earlier) have indeed gone an extra step or two and incurred legitimate costs (above and beyond one's labor, which don't count if it's just your hobby) in the form of websites they have to pay for, their own online reader setups, purchasing higher quality raws than are publicly available, yada yada yaya.........which, yeah, who really has a problem in those instances of these groups asking if people want to go in on it with them?

But has also been mentioned, some groups that are in the small number asking for "donations" by whatever methods, are actually holding their hand out and saying "I'll do it if you pay me", which is not the same thing as fan scanlations, and starts treading on some far more questionable ethical ground when you're talking about pirating someone else's work to begin with.

Last edited by svines85 at 12:58 pm, Sep 1 2017