Does anyone else think MangaUpdates is dying? I was looking at the series stats and noticed a hentai is #3 for this week and this month, which is crazy.

Really? OMG 🤣
I use it frequently but I hardly ever rate the series I'm following.

I don't think MangaUpdates is dying. It has a lot of historical info, it's updated a lot more frequently and accurately about a wide range of series than other general manga/novel tracking sites, and MU has a lot less annoying ad spam everywhere than the fandom wiki sites. MU is slower these days about being up-to-date on individual scanlation chapter releases, probably because scanlators don't bother to submit chapter releases here anymore and/or they're releasing chapters on sites/apps MU doesn't track. But MU is still useful on a series level for cataloging info that a series exists and is being scanlated by somebody and/or has an official English translation somewhere.

And yeah, I've used MU for years but also almost never bother to rate series I'm reading.

I don't think it's dead or dying and I wouldn't really judge it by the series stats too much as people have never been too great at rating series.

Forum interaction also isn't a great way to see how many people use the site since most chatting has transitioned to Discord and Reddit in recent years. The forums have definitely declined as a result and if that's how you deem a site to be dead or dying, then this one is definitely in that category.

I would look at poll interactions for a better understanding of the site's current user levels. A really brief look at how many people voted in the polls shows me that between 3K and 4K people participate per poll today while the peak was around 2013 with between 13K and 15K participants per poll. Poll participation seems to have been fairly steady for the past couple years as well leading me to believe the site's userbase is now fairly steady.

With that taken into consideration, there has been a significant decline, but the userbase doesn't appear to be in decline any longer. I still don't think that's exactly representative of how many users have stopped using the site as I presume that poll interactions have declined slightly alongside forum interactions. Only slightly though. It should also be taken into consideration that it is likely that a very small amount of people that use this site as a tracker for their reading progress, or to check updates, even participate in the polls despite them just being single click interactions. Hell, there are probably quite a few people that come on here that don't even have accounts for whatever reason.

I'd be curious what the actual stats are but I would conclude that the userbase has declined significantly over the years but now has a steady and maintained userbase.

Definitely not a dead site by any means, but not as widely used as it once was.

Last edited by you_no_see_me_ at 2:41 pm, Jun 18 2022

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"The statistics are based on activity of a certain series info page within our database."

I am not sure what this means, tbh. Is it people adding to lists? Because it doesn't look like it's 1) ratings (the Hentai you mentioned has none) or 2) last last updated (that Hentai manga's page was last updated Feb 2021). It's on some lists though so that might be it?

This unrated, unreviewed, non-scanlated hentai series is kinda killing it in the rankings tho, lol:

Weekly Pos #166 decreased(-70)
Monthly Pos #2 increased(+2)
3 Month Pos #12 increased(+731)
6 Month Pos #23 increased(+1363)
Year Pos #205 increased(+6518)

🤣

EDIT2: Realized there are two hentai series, one in Weekly and the other in Monthly, which auto-opened for me. I am speaking to "Abandon - 100 Nuki Shinai to Derarenai Fushigi na Kyoushitsu."

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 4:11 pm, Jun 18 2022

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http://i.imgur.com/LxhWm.jpg (will reformat this some day…)

I mean, even if you're counting by the metric "dead forums" = "dead site", MU is by no means dead, considering there are often multiple posts in one day. It might not be as active as in its heyday, but it's certainly still active. (I've seen some places with forums that people haven't posted in for months.)

Also, I think MU's niche is precisely those kinds of series that other databases don't bother to include, so it doesn't surprise me that it shows up on series stats.

Last edited by Suxinn at 5:33 pm, Jun 18 2022

I still visit this site for quality manga reviews. Although the recommendations section needs some work. But where reviews are concerned, this site is unbeatable, especially where the veteran names are concerned. Over the years, I've simply learnt to recognize them by their profile pics/usernames and their reviews are always worth keeping in mind.

Secondly, the search and category filters are pretty good, I usually have an easier time finding hidden gems here than anywhere else.
All this is coming from someone who regularly uses this site, half the time without bothering to log in.

I completely agree, I started because of the category filters and the option of checking out the coincidence of the List Stats of each users. When you're starting these features are great.

Even when your wish list /dropped series start grow and making these functions less efective, you are probably already adept at distinguishing old and new users with shared lists you find interesting. You can also check out an old comments/reviews/retired admins to find tons of manga with 10+ years. This is really useful since usually, ongoing series and ones with an ongoing anime/merchandise are the only ones on the spotlight. Series normally die down after being completed or if they get compared to a popular series.

Plus I've never see less than 20 members online, ATM there are 70 and this is only a small part of the users since most of the features are accesible without being logged in.

Though, it's true that ongoing series/forums are usually very silent. It's quite off putting to write on a post that was made years ago. There are many features that could be added to liven up those, such as not showing the post year on series posts, but I think the web is active enough.

It's not really dead. It's not the best for following erotic doujinshi, but it's pretty well-updated for serializations,

Manga-updates is the best manga database on the internet, since it includes whether or not the series is scanlated, and how far. Unlike the alternative, Mangadex, that will be shut down as soon as a DMCA hits for the manga they illegally host, this scanlation database will live through any purges.

A few years ago I used to visit this site everyday religiously, then novels started to peak and it seemed like only novel updates were being posted so I migrated to certain host site and suddenly pretty much got my update info directly from the series I was following. I’ve recently started coming back here, and honestly, I like this site. I hope it’ll be around for a very long time.
I don’t think it’s dead. It’s active enough.

Dunno if I didn't search enough but I see MU as still the best manga related database. I discovered initially in 2013. On no other site that I know of - and admittedly I know the most popular ones only - there are so many details in a series. Especially user curated categories (as long as they don't contain spam), somewhat the ratings and recommendations ("similar series to this serie" ) are spot on.

One thing I noticed though is that when I click "more" on the recommendation list, it doesn't work anymore. The Javascript is broken or the like.

If the website stops functioning in terms of web elements (this or that element stops working), then it would be a pity because the information collected here are hard to get on other websites.

For example the wealth of information that one can get though user based categories, like:
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?category=Award-Winning+Work&orderby=rating

is amazing and I didn't find anything close so far. It really helps to pick the next series when one doesn't have a lot of time, like I had years ago.

Last edited by pier4r at 3:30 am, Nov 5 2022

I was very active around 5-10 years ago reading manga but then Chinese/Korean novels come into the scene and they are much faster than manga. Now I only come here once in a while to look at the progress so I can directly binge a finished manga. With Chinese novels you don't even need to wait for translation, the MTL is good enough.

Years ago, I use to read the site all the time, now my interest in mangas have waned over the years. I still check the site occasionally. But I agree, I doubt it is flatling. 😮 🤨 🤨 🤨 😕 🤨 Unfortunately, I have noticed many anime/manga sites have eliminated their forum section. Turner Movie Classics cancelled theirs last fall. I really liked that forum.

I don't think it's dying. I've been going here nearly every day since 2010 and I don't see signs of it dying.