Transparency, Discussion, and Respect

The announcement of Batoto’s demise came as a surprise to everyone, except for Batoto’s staff. As a former scanlator who has released many chapters on Batoto, what shocked me the most is the I do not know who “Grumpy” is, nor “The Company”, and most of all what was involved with hosting Batoto.

I wonder why Mr/Ms Grumpy would not share and discuss information about Batoto’s costs and infrastructure issues? If not with readers, then at least with contributors. Who knows, there could be a dotcom or bitcoin millionaire who would pay for the infrastructure. There could be expert developers who could replace IPBoard. But Mr/Ms Grumpy was not comfortable reaching out to others in this way.

And that leads me to the issue of respect. I scanlated because I wanted to share what I loved with other people. From what we’ve learned in the past few days, Batoto’s mods were overwhelmed, and under empowered. I’ve learned to assume positive intent, to trust that people are doing the best the can under their circumstances. Let’s be honest, manga readers aren’t necessarily the most socially capable people. I felt disrespected when the Batoto mods summarily dismissed my concerns, but I guess they were too busy with forest fires to be concerned with issues about my scanlations.

Maybe the “50” batoto replacements will read this and learn something. And then read some of the posts about the costs. </RANT>