Sakura-Crisis is officially close

[yukawai]

This team will be dearly missed.

For anyone not aware, Katze has declared the site dead in this LJ article (click). The message was as follow:

It's been a long time coming, but Sakura-Crisis is now officially dead. I don't have the energy to take care of it anymore, and both Sakura & Crisis have been basically gone for a long time. It's sad to see it go.

The bittorrent tracker was disabled the other day due to my host cracking down and me not wanting to get my account disabled, so your best bet for finding anything now would be to try IRC somewhere. Our IRC channels have also officially been unregistered.

So here's where we say goodbye, and a huge thanks to everyone who's helped out with this project in the past what, four, five years? Translators, scanners, editors, and you guys, the fans who kept us going.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Please send them your thanks for all these years of jobs well done from the staff!

In a related topic, <s>I do not believe they will close this board as well or it may already have been. If it does come to that, I hope to keep seing all of you later.</s>

[edit] It won't be close. This board will stay for fanfics, fanarts or any of the fan-related usual topic

<font color="#660033" size="1">[ April 06, 2006 12:06 PM: Message edited by: Yue ]</font>

[yukawai]

That was my mod post. This is my personal reaction:

[img]graemlins/cry.gif[/img] OMG! [img]graemlins/cry.gif[/img]

I've discovered Sakura-Crisis shortly after it's been founded which is a little more than four years ago I think. This board have been create three and a half years ago.

The site was the first scanlation site I ever found and made me discover the world of scanlating, of fans activly working together to bring stuff to other fans. The staff have always been awesome, funny, clever and ressourceful in ways I'm still admiring. They worked hard years after years to bring us what we read and see. I wish much, much love to them. [img]graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

This forum. It has become my fanfamilly, my hometown on this World Wide Web. For a newcomer youth, having a place where I know the members, know what to expect of them, have on-going discussions about little and big things, do RPG... it wasn't heave, but it was 'home', like a flat you'd share with roomates you ahve yet to know.

For the other 'oldies', Risu, Dark Jadey, tsukiyama, Carole Ann, spacelion, and every others: remember the rans, the greetings, the talks on Gackt's choice of hairstyle based on his pets, the joy of new releases (petshop of horror, Love Master, YnM, Cain, Ludwig..) and the liscencing of some of them (AS, YnM)? The debates going on hen the site released to IRC? Or our strange discussions on the channel?

So. I will ask for confirmation, but I do not think this forum will be closed unless all activity stops forever - which it may. However, it does seem obsolete to have a forum on a scanlation site if the later is closed. Also, a lot of the 'old crew' do not nearly have as much time to spend here, or inclinaison to since the site was down so often. The newbies [scanlation junkies] don't seem much talkative either.

I seriously have no idea what to do. What do you think?

Do we start elsewhere? Do we say goodbye?
What I do know is that if we don't choose, then it is goodbye... and thanks for all the fish. =)

[crystalgryphon]

I'm going to start by adding my regrets, thanks, and good wishes to Yue's.

Now. The question of restarting elsewhere--either a new group of maintainers taking over and rebuilding, or forming a new scanlation group to continue S-C's outstanding projects--and what would be needed to pull it off.

We'd absolutely need the cooperation of as many as possible of the people who were actually doing the work on the projects--scanners, translators, and so on.

We'd need permission to re-upload the existing files somewhere. To my knowledge, Katze is the only one who can give that permission (unless the contact information I have for Crisis is good).

We'd need the existing files themselves. That may mean asking volunteers to upload them somewhere.

We'd need a person--or better, a small group of people--to coordinate everything and maintain the new group's website, if any. I think a group of 4-5 volunteers would be best--that's large enough that *someone* is always going to be available, and small enough to stay coordinated. Unfortunately, I can't be one of them--I'm already the sole maintainer of four websites and the primary admin of two mailing lists, and they all suffer when I have one of my periodic bouts of depression--but I'm willing to help with the initial setup.

We need some method of distributing the scanlations, ideally a website. That means getting space on a server . . . but in the worst case, we could resort to using space on some free provider plus the kind of file servers that have been used to distribute the Fairy Cube files.

Nice-to-haves: the other stuff from the original site, the domain name (that costs money, though) or at least a distinctive subdomain, paid web space that would let the files be hosted locally, the torrent tracker, the IRC channels.

That's what we're looking at. The first step, I think, would be getting at least one volunteer maintainer and having him/her approach Katze (or Crisis, but Katze has more current information).

Gryphon.

[yukawai]

Ah -- Gryphon, when I talked about continuing somewhere else, I was tinking of the message board, not of the principal site. I hadn't yet contacted Katze to ask if the here would stay then. Since it will, I hadn't thought any farther.

The question of restarting elsewhere--either a new group of maintainers taking over and rebuilding, or forming a new scanlation group to continue S-C's outstanding projects--and what would be needed to pull it off.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I will admit your proposition is great though. But as for the question, I don't think it's feasable to take back Sakura-Crisis.

Katze closed it. She didn't offer it to anyone, or ask for replacements. There must be reasons behind this, and the primary one coming to mind is that the whole former staff have agreed to her idea. That means they don't either have the time nor reason or will to continue. Also, now that people have gotten used to S-C being closed, wouldn't it be kind of cruel to bring it it back, even if it's by long-time fans? No, I don't think the first option will work or be welcomed.

The second, however, is more likely. I don't know about recruting the old staff though - they might be occupied like previously stated, or want a break from scanlating for a while. They may already have signed up with other projects/teams. (And I have no way of contacting any of them)

If we are to start a group or mini team (chibi team? ^_~) by ourself it would seem more fair to the former staff and to the general fanreading community to do like every other team. That is, recruiting people we know (starting here) and posting WANT "ads" or asking around in forums/mIRC/sites. Just so everyone has fair game. *I'm an equity freak I guess*

Seriously though, I don't know. I like to edit, but I found that I work best as freelance because I have deadline-o-phobia. And I like to choose what I work on. I work good with people, but I do not believe I'd be very good at guiding any team. I know html enough to make update, simple layouts or upload stuff or share them on IRC though. If people went for this, we could start with something small like an LiveJournal group (some teams are like this) and see how it goes.

Last, about the hosting of s-c projects. I can contact Katze all right, but do not know what to ask, or whether it is polite to do so. We do not have to be a 'new' team to share stuff by another team. We could simply be hosters, like many already exist. There is even a couple that specialize in one team, so this wouldn't be any new to the community. I have never heard of any hosting stuff from one team which is closed, though. We could do it - if we have permission - and worry about our team, if we want one, one a whole other hand. Budget in mind (lack of theros, in fact), I suggest using things like megaupload or individual site space donations. It is kind of like what Manga-Ai is doing, which seems to work pretty well.

Those were my 1 AM suggestions and thoughts. Please forgive some lack of coherency throught the whole. ^^;;

[crystalgryphon]

It's possible that Katze is just too burnt out to even try to look for a new set of maintainers, or tried a couple of times and then had the people who offered to take over fail to come through and is too tired of the whole business to try again. I haven't really had enough contact with her to be able to say whether, under those circumstances, her response to a request to take over the files and outstanding projects would be "fine, I wash my hands of all this, good riddance and YOU can worry about everything from now on," or hostility, or what, but I think she might be less hostile if someone approached *her* than her having to look for someone, if you know what I mean.

There is at least one precent for one group taking over all or most of the projects of one that has dispersed--Nakama and Shi-ran--but Nakama was already an established group then, and I don't know from which end the approach was made.

The replies to the LiveJournal entry contain at least one instance of what I interpret as a tentative interest by one of the translators in continuing to work, but . . .

My concern with handling everything solely from this board is this--this *is* a message board, and only the last few entries will be immediately visible to new visitors. IMHO, that's less workable than dumping a few megaupload links in free webspace somewhere (even if it is less work). At very least, we need a board that allows for "sticky" messages. (Given the server space and tools, I could create something involving a database, PHP, and some simple password-locked administration forms for adding files/links and projects, but Not Just Now.)

Upon reflection, though, you're right that starting up a new group under the Sakura-Crisis name probably isn't the best idea. ("Shinigami Distributing", maybe, to emphasise the back from the dead aspect? ^_^;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; )

This thread has been read thirty-eight times, and I can't believe that that's just from me and Yue doing so over and over again. ^_^;; What about the rest of you? Do you think this is feasible? Worthwhile? What S-C projects, if any, do *you* want to see continued, and are you willing to help set things up? Or should we just let S-C's abandoned files and projects disappear off the face of the Web?

Gryphon, who's probably little more coherant before breakfast than Yue was at 1AM, and is feeling a little guilty about airing this when she knows she can't stay in for the long haul.

[aikasan]

OMG!!! i'm about to cry right now, this is like the worst notice of the week, and i may state here this hasn't been the best week ever, first the biblos closing forever thing and then this...
i can't say i wasn't expecting it, i mean the site had already been dead long before this but when you put the word "officially" before the dead part, god it's just much more shocking, to yue and gryphon , if i can help at all with anything just let me know, i think i have -almost- everything that sakura-crisis did, but i must warn you i don't know a thing about hosting or editing or, or...well you get the main picture here, i know english/spanish if it helps out, but if you think of some other way i may be helpful, let me know.
i want to thank everyone that was ever involved in the site for giving me the opportunity to know the existence of all those beautiful mangas, as yue, sakura-crisis was the very first scanlating site i bumped into and it was really special for me just because of that, to all of the s-c board seniors, or junkies, or whatever this is the time to be here and try helping out.

now i gotta go and smutter myself with a pillow, excuse me...

[yukawai]

Alright, we've got something.

I've contacted Katze. First of all, the drop of the team seemed to be due on a combination of Real Life being evil, the whole site being dumped unto her without warning and finally the lost fo the main host. Sakura has been long gone and Crisis is in the HK without internet connection.

Second, she'd prefer we do not host the projects on personal sites or share it with any other hosts as of yet. She has lots of place left on her own server and will upload the files there for sharing, including chapter 2 of Fairy Cube that was done by the staff but enver released. There may be releases like Bloodhound ch2 or Ludwig ch4 in the futur, but that has to be discussed further. /spoilers/teasers ^_~

She WILL, however, need some help getting all the files ready as she is missing some. I will make a whole new thread about this with her contact info, details and everything. Aikasan, and anyone else with files from sakura-crisis, you will be of help. =)

I am pretty sure this puts an end to our discussion of an hosting palce or new team continuing projects. However, we may bring it up again later depending on what is chosen to be done on the formentioned chapters. New threads will be done then. Stay tuned on the message board! ^___^