So I noticed while adding manhua that IIE STAR is noted as a mangaka for all of it's releases when the company functions as a publisher. Many manhua scraping websites will report that the author is IIE STAR when reading the first chapter or page typically includes the names of the actual authors, illustrators, colorists, and others involved. However, their publisher entry is used up by IIE STAR's Korean subsidiary which puts out different manhwa/adapted manhua. Could these two entities be merged such that it is known IIE STAR is a publisher that serializes their webtoons/manhua into sites like Bilibili and has a Korean subsidiary as part of the IIE STAR GROUP

🎵: Lose My Mind by Greentea Peng

So what exactly do you want us to do?

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Oh yes, a lot of manhua sites list the original publisher alongside the actual author/artist, which is probably what's causing the confusion.

A first step would probably be, for updaters at least, to input the correct author/artist for each manhua listed under that publisher, and then ask the mods to delete the publisher as a mangaka and discuss renaming the default publisher, etc.

Well, someone's gotta do that initial work of updating with the correct authors, and it's not going to be me.

A just ruler amongst tyrants

OK, I actually looked through some of these webcomics to see if I could help with some of that updating, but it turns out that most of these webcomics only list IIE STAR as the author -- none of them credit the artist. I have no idea if IIE STAR is doing all this work in-house, or if artist contracts in China are just so bad that it's normal not to get credited for their work, but... Honestly, I don't see how there's any way to fix this. Since IIE STAR is the sole credit, it basically has to remain as a "mangaka", even if that's not technically accurate.

Most of these are based on webnovels, though, so theoretically, if you're dedicated enough, you can search up the original WNs and credit the original authors (though the artists will still go uncredited), but that's a lot of work for very little return imo.

Thanks for letting me know!
A lot of IIE STAR's webtoons uploaded to bilibili or qoo have the credits at the beginning of every chapter in Chinese but you're right in that it would be a lot of work for little return and not everyone uploading these series wants to put in the effort to translate them to figure out who's the author vs the artist. If I continue to add IIE STAR's series, I'll list them as the publisher and include the credited authors/artists

🎵: Lose My Mind by Greentea Peng

while the base page for manhua tend to only list the publisher, detailed credits tend to be listed either at the start or end of every chapter. in terms of artists, they list the colorist at most unless they count the lineartist as a producer or editor idk. some have great art which i'd like to see credited, but i dont feel like looking through with my scuffed chinese.

edit: OP beat me too it

I actually did look through the first chapter of a few of these series on Bilibili and some of the other sites, but I didn't find any credits whatsoever. I mean, I can read Chinese, so I don't mind putting in a little work to click into the first chapters in order to find these detailed credits and add them, but if there are credits located within these manhua, they're either not on the first chapters or only some manhua have credits and some just... don't? Both of which makes it much more of a chore to investigate.

Anyway, since these sites are listing IIE STAR as an author, I say, even if authors/artists are found, just to keep IIE STAR as an author alongside detailed credits, since I assume they have some editorial-level control over how these manhua are being made anyway.