Database Guidelines Updated

shinkeikaku said:
I don't even know what that means--comics drawn in English, but published in the US by someone living in Japan? We don't care about where they live, but what audience the work was intended for. For example, if it's not originally published in Japan for a Japanese audience, we don't care if they live there, it's not eligible.

telepop said:
That's just a loophole, you've dismissed my entire argument with that single statement, if you don't publish your comic in Japan in Japanese it's not manga.

People are people, and the themes in a comic can be universal. An OEL artist reads manga, appreciates Japanese comics and draws in their style to appeal to the manga reading audience. Asian influenced manga and all Korean webtoons can't be on here, so differences are more important than the underlying concept? What are the advantages of being so conservative and rigid? Will it make your job harder? Also, sorry for being apathetic and disrespectful of the rules and posting on the sticky before. Thank you for your time.

Kineta said:
While I suspect few (if any) will have qualms about the doujin changes, more users may be upset with our decision to remove OEL. I would like you to know that this was not an easy decision and there was an extensive discussion among the staff that lasted for many months. The problem with OEL stems from two key issues. First, much of what is marketed as manga by North American groups, such as TokyoPop, is actually closer to graphic novels than any kind of manga due to style, content, imagery, etc. and it is impossible to write guidelines to only include true OEL series. Second, our anime guidelines specifically restrict any animated media that is not Japanese/Korean/Chinese and FAQs specifically state Avatar is not allowed. As anime is the main target of the site, this demonstrates that OEL is truly outside of our scope. With the current revisions, our anime and manga guidelines are in sync with one another. Other factors certainly played into this decision, but these were two of the key points.

Kineta said:
No database can ever be all inclusive. IMDB doesn't list books, librarything doesn't list games, vndb doesn't list manga, etc.etc.

Every database needs to have a scope, and things that don't fit within that scope are excluded. This site is an anime and manga listing site. What is anime and what is manga is determined by the audience the work was intended for. There is nothing racial or unfair or dictatorial about it. We have included Korean and Chinese animation, and by extension, manhwa and manhua in the manga db, based on our community. We've included light novels, but limited it to those tied to the anime and manga industry. We excluded doujin because it was impossible to define quality standards and we would never be close to having a comprehensive database. We have excluded OEL for similar reasons - it is impossible to define a quality standard for what is actually similar to manga and what is really a glorified graphic novel labelled as "manga" to try and increase sales. And our community has very little interest in OEL at all. Furthermore, we do not allow webcomics from Naver any more than we allow Japanese doujin.

In two years, this thread has received less than 4 pages of posts. If the community felt traumatised by not being able to include OEL on their lists, they'd speak louder.

I'll quote myself from the first page as well, in case you didn't read it:

telepop said:
Why is Annarasumanara on here? Double standard.

telepop said:
You'd be doing something unlike any other website is doing, right? Letting maybe all comics, American or otherwise, and all webcomics on here. Because ultimately it's about YOUR list, what you've read and you liked and want to remember.