Mini-rant

[crystalgryphon]

[Note: This has nothing to do with sakura-crisis--it's due to my anger and frustration with a couple of other scanlation groups, which I shan't name here.]

Why is it that so many scanlation groups that distribute their stuff only by IRC have to be so *snotty* about it? I mean, *yes* I understand that bandwidth costs money (I've priced it more than once in the past) and that some groups simply can't afford HTTP or even FTP distribution, and I furthermore feel that you're entitled to distribute your own work in any way you want, but that *doesn't* entitle you to call people for whom IRC just isn't an acceptable distribution channel names in your FAQ, no matter *how* frustrated you are with people pestering you to distribute things by some other method. A simple "No, we can't afford to distribute things by other means, no exceptions, people pestering us about this will be killfiled" would suffice.

(For those who've joined up here since the last time something like this came up--I don't use IRC (or bittorrent or Streamload, for that matter) for technical reasons having to do with my equipment and connection, and for personal ideological reasons, none of which translate into being lazy, stupid, or unwilling to learn how to use a new piece of software, and I'm *really* offended by people who assume these are the only possible reasons for someone to be unwilling to obtain their files in a specific manner.)

[Lucethira]

Eep >.< That is an ouch.

I don't understand why they have to be pissyfaced about it either.

In my opinion IRC is my least favorite of distribution methods... it's unreliable, unorganized, and you have to manually look through each person's trigger to see if they have the thing you're looking for. And if you're lucky enough to find it, you have to be lucky enough to get it because most likely you'll be put in a queue spot which will make you wait hours before you can actually get your file, by which time you will probably be off the computer so all your hard work searching was for nothing.

I just wonder how come a more sophisticated IRC hasn't been invented yet.

It would be really nice if someone could invent and program something like a Napster for the manga scanslation world. If only I could program... ><

[Reikou Hitakana]

One of the main problems is that yes, people allow huge ques. In all honesty, of they limited it to like 2-5 people, it'd make things much faster, and increase the likelihood that people would get what they want when they want, and increase the amount of chatting in the channel since people wouldn't come, queue, and leave.

-Reikou

[crystalgryphon]

One of the things that makes IRC such a poor file distribution method is that it was never *intended* for that--it's a chat protocol (probably the oldest chat or IM protocol still in common use these days, IIRC). The file-serving functionality was tacked on afterwards.

[Reikou Hitakana]

I'd say it's probably the oldest next to old BBS, usenet and straight telnet protocols.

-Reikou

[crystalgryphon]

. . . none of which are intended for realtime communications between users, which is what I was thinking of--sorry if that wasn't clear.

(talk might predate IRC, but AFAIK, talk is obsolete.)