I think everything you wrote are definitely valid questions. There doesn't seem to be any logical reason why this particular group has made it past those verification hurdles. Maybe you could try PM'ing an admin and asking them? It was Lambchopsil who said they were a "special case", so maybe you could try him.

At this point, I've basically ignored anything Harudaki has "released". I'm not sure the quality is up to snuff based on some of their old releases, in my opinion. (For example, they did the 2nd half of volume 2, volume 3 and 4 of Play Boy Blues by Kano Shuiko. It was so bad with terrible grammar that it gave me a headache. I'm still mad about it because she's one of my favorite mangaka and 2/3 of the series is pretty much complete garbage until Fujoshi Bitches picked it up for vols 5-6. 🙄 ) It's possible they could've improved since then, idk, but it's not enough for me, personally, to care if they remain private, even if they've scanlated some manga I'd read (for example, this 3 volume series by Uchida Kaoru: Soshite Tsuzuki ga Aru no Nara, Kaeranakutemo Ii no Dakeredo, and Soshite Subete ga Ugokidasu. The other groups have only done vol 1 and half of vol 2, and who knows if it'll ever get finished, sadly. I just ended up buying the books anyway because she's a favorite creator of mine.)

My hope is that other scan groups don't see them listed as a group doing a scanlation of a manga, and then decide that they won't pick it up because Harudaki is working on it. I think most OG groups know that they are private so it doesn't affect their decisions. Newer groups should be aware of them and all the other groups that are "public" yet make it difficult to access a group's releases, i.e. you gotta fill out forms, join Discords and use passwords, PM/email and wait for permission, etc. These tactics, in my opinion, basically mean a scan group shouldn't be able to claim a manga as off-limits for any other group to work on (the so called "one-group-per-manga" rule).

Last edited by Jessica_desu29 at 8:00 am, Jul 21 2022

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떡대수 supremacy

I probably will end up dming an admin with these questions, but I think having this discussion in the forums would be more productive for the community (assuming everyone can behave themselves). If people think differently let me know.

It would definitely be helpful for scan groups and readers if Group Info pages had an “access” descriptor or something with options like public/semi-private/private. I’ve spent way too much time trying to find scans from groups that either turned out to be private, or have no information anywhere, and I doubt I'm the only one.

I have always found it ridiculous though that groups would claim mangas. It’s generally redundant for multiple [public] groups to scanlate the same manga into the same language (unless there were quality issues), which is one of my major concerns – groups won’t scan manga that appears to already have a team working on it, either because of redundancy and/or because of aggressive behavior from other groups. But if a group wants to scan something that another group already scanned/is scanning, what is the actual issue?

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if i stop posting here i’ve been banned ^^

I want to point out that I have no issue with how public/private groups decide to be, and I’m not trying to attack this site or any groups. I’ve used BU for a long time, I have a read a number of Harudaki’s scans from when they were public, and I use Harudaki in my examples simply because that’s the public -> private group that I’m most familiar with, and so I have examples. I am grateful to all the groups that scanned manga I’ve read, and when a group decides that it’s going private or inactive I’m sorry to see them go but it doesn’t bother me.

I’m also not trying to talk about the morals of aggregator sites or scanlations in general, because that’s not the issue here.

I just think there is a problem affecting the user experience on this site, and I would love to see that corrected. I don’t think private groups need to be removed outright, but I do think the way they affect a public site needs to be changed.

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if i stop posting here i’ve been banned ^^

Oh, I mentioned the PM'ing an admin thing because your questions seem like something only they'd be able to nswer, and if you were able to get answers, you could then post them here if you'd like. Because unfortunately, there have been a number of posts in the forums about this issue and no admin has, from my knowledge, ever responded to these inquiries publicly. A bit of clarification from admins would be helpful.

I 100% agree with your suggestion about having some information about whether a group is public or private! I think that would solve the majority of the issue, in my opinion. Then all scan groups could use MU freely without unnecessary confusion to readers. Like you, i have absolutely went searching for groups where the search ended being pointless because they were private.

Also, if the "completely scanlated=Yes/No" box would be changed to "completely scanlated by at least one public group". Currently, it only stipulates that at least one group in their database has scanlated a manga for it to be marked as completed, obviously because the assumption is that a group needs to be basically accessible to have releases approved anyway. But that's not the case 100% of the time, as we see with Harudaki.

Just these two changes would help things. They already list on a scan group's page if they are active or inactive, which is useful for another group to pick up a series; adding private or public would fine tune the decision about picking up a manga series by a group even more. It could cause a massive change in the database, idk I'm not familiar with codes, etc, but it would be worthwhile.

Last edited by Jessica_desu29 at 8:18 pm, Jul 21 2022

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As long as a group's way of organizing themselves doesn't negatively affect another group's operations, they can do what they want in any way they like. There are some who may get miffed about a group being private, but I think most people aren't bothered by it. If one can't read the manga as a scan, there's always something else to read, thankfully. 😉 It's just the phantom releases and updates giving false positives that are annoying but, to be honest, that really isn't the group's direct fault. It's the way the database is currently set up with respect to this issue that's causing the problem (or at least the exceptions that are being allowed).

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Piggybacking onto this thread even though I just commented on a similar one elsewhere, sorry

I honestly think the ultra-private groups that don't allow any new people but are allowed to post releases are in fact hurting the community. Truly, completely believe they are damaging the reader base here. As previously mentioned, they are preventing other groups from picking up series that are listed as complete and alienating a bunch of readers who get frustrated that series are unavailable despite being listed and they decide that this website is clearly not accurate. I get extraordinarily frustrated that can't read almost ANYTHING by some of my favorite authors cause this group has "completed" all of their works. No one else will pick those titles up, not unless they specifically search out the titles to counteract Harudaki.

I blocked their releases but they show up everywhere. After a while I forget about how much this frustrates me, and then I see an author I enjoy has published something new when I look at their page and I instantly get boiling mad that Harudaki has crapped all over it. It's just further proof that the admins don't care that they are pissing off their users by allowing them to do this, because why else would they make a special allowance to a group that is clearly breaking the rules they set for others? It's so frustrating, and I periodically look for new websites of a similar nature to see if I should switch over because I feel like MU just doesn't care about us sometimes.

This is what Harudaki's livejournal profile says--so they're not just private, they're not sharing their releases at all. So I really don't think they should be allowed to post updates. (Also as someone who worked on scanlations for over a decade, I have zero interest in putting all that effort into translating or lettering something for only a handful of people to read... but I digress.)

This is not clear anywhere on their group page here, or even on the main livejournal pages linked as their 'website' which just has a single cryptic post from 2013--you have to click though to their profile. Them posting releases as if a series is already being worked on and publicly released, will stop other groups from working on it. To say nothing of the time people are going to waste looking for the releases to read...

I wholeheartedly agree with points made before and don't mind a group going private, I'm sure they have their reasons, but Harudaki feels like entering malicious intent territory. There's a difference between hard to find/temporarily inactive discord and no trace ANYWHERE, except vague blog posts and the same reply over and over again. I refuse to believe that so many people messaged them only to not contribute (assuming they accept monetary donation to get the raws, not only translations/editing) and thus not get even a glimpse of the releases. A private group of scanlators is just that, it shouldn't be considered an official active group, not on MU.

Lo and behold, Harudaki is plastered all over the site. Other scanlation teams usually refuse their manga, bless the kind souls that scanlate. Are MU mods members or can somehow access the releases? Because no one else seems to. If someone's saying there's a good reason for Harudaki to still appear as active and hog scanlations, they better state it. Because that's literally what it seems they're doing: preventing others to scanlate "their" manga.

So either there is a super secret active manga scanlation group called Harudaki or we're all purposefully getting trolled by gatekeepers and left high and dry.

(Yes, I'm salty over stumbling into the Harudaki gate time and time again)

When I first created this thread I didn't realise Harudaki was basically the only private group allowed on here. I just thought it was the only one I noticed. On one hand, I'm glad it is the exception (this is what I got from the replies to this thread at least), so I know that when other series are listed as "completed" and not by Harudaki I will be able to actually read them. On the other hand it saddens me that a website as accurate and full of useful information as mangaupdates would allow something nonsensical like this. Does anybody know if, after more than 2 years, the situation has changed, if at all? I had a quick look at Harudaki's page and apparently the last "released" chapter was added less than 24 hours ago, so I guess they are still "active".

Any update regarding this?

You know, at some point, someone might get mad enough to hack private group's databases or home PCs if they get to tell the world they updated but have no desire to let anyone outside of a small group of friends/helpers see it. (For the record, hacking other people's stuff is illegal; don't do it.)

I think it would be beneficial to both the private group (to be clear, one that doesn't accept all new viewers applying to be members) and the rest of the people using this website to remove updates that aren't accessible to the average person. The former doesn't paint a target on themselves and the latter doesn't end up waiting for eternity because no one wants to "snipe" them.

At the very least, "(private)" should be added to their releases so that other groups know they can take it on.

I don't think any group has the right to complain about being sniped if they aren't going to make a manga available to the average reader. Especially since that group probably didn't buy the distribution rights and is illegally distributing the translation anyway (the only reason more groups don't get cease and desists is because the translations actually generate free interest and advertising in other countries, which means it's a symbiotic relationship to some degree, so often the rightful owners and distributors don't say much—similar to fan fiction, where the only reason a lawsuit hasn't happened and set precedent yet is because the original authors and fan authors both don't want to go there).

If they do have the distribution rights, then they can do anything they want in regards to telling others to stop sniping, because they are paying for the legal rights. It's the same as if a group gets a cease and desist from the original author or publisher in that case.

And to be clear, if you have the legal rights to distribution in the language in question (original author and/or publisher have the rights to all languages) then you have the rights to legally challenge anyone without those rights.

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I'm a jack of all trades but master of none. Too many jars and not enough hands.

Shouldn't this circle back to the point of why scanlation status is being tracked at all? A private group is essentially a personal copy among friends - it's like if I said, "Oh, yeah, I read the raw for that and then I explained the plot page-by-page to my friend because they're my friend and I wanted to share with them, specifically."

I mean, in that scenario, it's "scanlated" in my head and I could share it to a larger group but am choosing not to. I understand why a group would go private. All that time and effort with the simple ask that you not re-upload to a profit-generating site...just for people to not listen. I'd get frustrated, too. It does create a sticky situation for tracking if you have some titles that were available for a while before going private, but if they're indefinitely offline then it makes sense to get rid of them.

However, I am curious on who is updating Harudaki's page, lol? Maybe it's a personal tracking system for them, but an Excel sheet could do that easily.

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 5:02 pm, Jul 3 2023

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

I probably should clarify: I'm cool with groups that want to be private. I just don't want to know they released a scanlated chapter that I'll never be allowed to view, because it's effectively the same thing as if I never knew it was translated in the first place.

Same difference.

Last edited by LazyReviewer at 1:47 am, Jul 4 2023

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I'm a jack of all trades but master of none. Too many jars and not enough hands.

seems like a reasonable carrot to recruit new members
it was the same thing 30yrs ago with fansubs; do I want to join sketch college club to get access to X, Y & Z titles??
surely I won't have to sell my soul...
Otaku No Video flashback

yeah i've pretty much entirely stopped using this site because harudaki has made my reading list worthless :/

kinda sad that this is the hill baka wants to die on


on a positive note, old fashioned cupcake has an english official now (:

Last edited by stjimmy at 12:23 am, Jul 8 2023

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if i stop posting here i’ve been banned ^^