RANT: When an Idol Falls

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by Wujigege, Aug 2, 2020.

  1. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    I used to be a big fan of the founder of WW. After all, I only started my website because of a forum post I saw there in 2015 or 2016 about a drug junkie who became a novel junkie.
    Imagine saving someone from overdosing without even needing to go to medical school.
    http://forum.wuxiaworld.com/discussion/545/wuxiaworld-has-probably-saved-my-life
    https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2...chinese-web-novels-curing-his-addiction-drugs

    How cool is that?
    But this is the final straw. When it was the crazy idiot Guan Zhong who then as a member of Wuxiaworld was attacking me every post I made, it was easy to say it was just one person who had gone rogue.
    It is a whole other story if it is the Founder himself.
    Of course, I know why they are doing it:
    No one knows who my translators are. According to these so called "gatekeepers" paying translators and keeping their names private is a "crime".

    Pfft!! What a joke. I should make it easy for people to poach my translators like some idiot.
    That is why when I make simple posts like bot traffic earns zero revenue, I get attacked by the founder of Wuxiaworld. It is just pathetic.

    Wuxiaworld will poach your translators if they are good enough. Webnovel poached translators from Wuxiaworld.
    Do not think you can rely on the goodness of the human heart. That is naive.
    People here want to bury their heads in the sand but as long as labor is involved with a form of income.
    It is a business.
    This is a warning to smaller websites.
    I know I am going to get accused of freaking out by the WW army but meeh.
    Smaller websites are needed because they will guarantee we get unique stories.
    When I started out WW tried to poach my translator who turned out to be the editor.
    That was funny but also a wake up call.
    Having your best staff poached is the norm.
    If you are naive enough to think that won't happen then you will be very disappointed.

    Also, please stop trying to copy the model of large websites. You do not have the resources or the traffic to emulate them.
    Find something that works for you
    *Yawn* Anyone plan on watching Sky High 2005 film and pretending it is the live-action of Boku no Hero Academia?
    I intend to since it inspired the manga
    Over and out. Thanks for reading my rant. It was good to get that off my chest.

    P.S. Give translators a raise when you can afford or at least offer to cover paypal fees. Your translators are your most important resource. Having a pretty website is not as important

    EDIT: If my translators were treated as badly as you all claim. They would be making threads on here complaining every day. This is the internet I cannot exactly stop them. I do not have them locked up in a basement in chains. They won't be working with me since as far back as 2017
    You guys are so stuck up that you do not see how stupid you are.
    Then again, it is no surprise, humans see what they want to see regardless of the reality that is why we get so many unnecessary conflicts



    I apologize. Your website is different.
    It is the same way the meal of Jeff Bezos or a King seems ridiculous me

    To correct your misunderstanding:
    I do not act like I own my translators.
    I pay for chapters and I get them
    It is that simple.

    I know other websites have a discord where the translators and site owners are buddies telling stories but I don't give a crap what even the sex of my translators are.
    I don't have a discord channel or use discord either(deleted mine)

    It is a simple transaction: We negotiate a rate, I pay for 10 chapters and I get 10 chapters.
    Nothing more, nothing less.


    If that is a crime then I am guilty as charged
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2020
  2. Digix

    Digix Owl-sama Follower

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    lol, I agree about them being business but it has all been you included whats the saying oh yeah.....the pot calling the kettle black
     
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  3. Shadowstriker

    Shadowstriker Well-Known Member

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    Yeet I knew webnovel poached novels from websites and re-released it on their site for money. But i didn't know that ww poaches translators. I mean it is fair to poach talent but being attacked for protecting your team is just plain wrong. Isn't there like laws/rules against targetting smaller business or something?
     
  4. rwxwuxiaworld

    rwxwuxiaworld Well-Known Member

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    To begin, the entire premise of this thread is so fucking funny because of how bullshit it is, because I wasn't even aware of him 'not crediting translators'; my issue was him calling Kiki a liar and posting lots of bullshit information about ads. BUT, if we wanna talk about more than ads, sure! Now, it's pretty clear that Guan Zhong and I are not exactly on the best of terms. We disagree on a lot of things, but we do agree on one thing - tldr: Wujigege's website, business model, and business ethics are shit and only really benefit him.

    Poaching Translators

    Complete bullshit. One - I can categorically say that Wuxiaworld has never tried to poach any of his novels. To this very day, I personally am responsible for approving every single translator application. So - that's bullshit. Honestly - I don't trust the quality of translators who would be willing to work for what Wujigege is willing to pay them. I could be completely wrong, his translators could be awesome! It's just how I feel. The idea I'd try to 'poach' his translators is just LOL.

    Two - we don't need to poach translators. In our last CN recruitment post on Wuxiaworld, we got over four hundred applications. From those, we sifted through the obviously bad ones, then tested around a hundred applicants, before finally settling on ten of the best. We just went through something similar on the Korean side. Wuxiaworld pays translators the highest rates in the industry and gives them the best treatment, and that's why so many people want to work with us.

    As a brief aside, that is why although we lost two translators to Webnovel/QI, both were recent transplants from the Gravity exodus, one of them eventually came back to us, and we have since hired ten translators who were working at Webnovel - and in every case, they reached out to us! I'm happy with that result. Shocking, but if you treat people well, people won't want to quit working with you. One translator was literally offered $10k a month to leave Wuxiaworld. He didn't.

    Three - You can only lose translators if you mistreat them. On top of being credited, every single Wuxiaworld translators is in our public Discord; anyone and everyone (including QI) can reach out to them at any time to 'poach' them. Why have none left? Because they know that Wuxiaworld treats them well. The OP being so cautious about 'hiding' his translators is mostly just an indictment on himself and his treatment of them, because he strongly suspects that if he didn't keep them hidden in the basement, they'd run away. That's a kidnapper mentality.

    Wujigege's Business Model

    I've made it clear that I don't like this guy because, to be blunt, his business model is shit for everyone but him - authors, translators, and readers. This is why his site is basically the bottom feeder of translation sites.

    He splits chapters randomly, drops novels and translators as soon as they don't do well, makes his site almost unusable, and after three or four years of monetizing translations despite not being a translator, has made not even the slightest effort of routing some of his gains towards the authors who first created these novels. He will argue that he doesn't make enough money to do so - which is true, and his 'business model' ensures that he never will, because he doesn't generate enough value.

    His behavior damages trust in readers, which actually damages him as well, but he's legitimately too dumb to realize it - there are multiple small sites with one translator that focuses on one novel that generates more revenue than his entire site. Just look at his Patreon - he has a total of 58 patrons for his entire site, whereas many smaller sites have several times more. Why? Because they practice good ethics and ensure that readers know what they pick up won't be dropped for no reason - but he thinks good ethics is for suckers. It's not - it's the foundation of every business.

    His behavior also damages authors. A Korean author/publisher recently reached out to Wuxiaworld to ask us to translate their novel. I had to decline, in part because the novel had already been picked up (and later dropped) by his site, the translation quality got terrible reviews, and I just didn't feel comfortable with it. It was 'tainted', and I wanted something clean. So we turned it down.

    Finally, his behavior damages translators. Aside from paying them peanuts, everything that you read on Wuxiaworld is 'eternal'; our licensed translations are now the permanent, official translations that will be around for decades to come. In contrast - his stuff, once being dropped, will just vanish into the ether of the internet. There's no pride in translation, no sense of ownership and responsibility - it's just "is it making money or losing money". And there never will be pride or long-term value, because his entire business model is fucked up, and he has a vested interest in keeping it that way.

    He starts with Chinese novels - they get dropped when publishers took notice. He then moved on to Korean novels; now they are getting dropped as publishers are taking notice. Now he is talking about moving on to Japanese novels. Guess what's going to happen?

    He has 'created' nothing permanent, nothing that lasts, nothing of true value - just a small money stream from ads and a tiny readerbase, which routes him some money each month. And that's why his site and his business model are complete shit.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2020
  5. anon1guy

    anon1guy Well-Known Member

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    to be honest, I blame Wuxiaworld for Webnovel.com. It was WW who brought them in. Furthermore it is seeking of "legitimecy" that is causing them to translate really bad third rate novels. Even outside of Qidian there are great novels that can be translated but they probably don't do it cause of licensing and what not. Like how RWX couldn't translate Dragon Talisman to this day. Long story short you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. While they were the pioneers of this Novel translation game now they are also responsible IMO from stopping it from expanding and getting actually good novels to be translated.
     
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  6. Magnus183

    Magnus183 Well-Known Member

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    I'm here for drama
     
  7. kennykdogg

    kennykdogg Sage of 7 sins

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    i thought people hate you on here too or is that the WW lackeys giving you a bad rep?
     
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  8. Magnus183

    Magnus183 Well-Known Member

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    Idk about the WW lackeys but he sometimes came of as a prick when answering questions lol. But sometimes he also give good reply so..

    Who knows??
     
  9. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    People hate me on here for their own reasons.
    Whether they are justified is their own business
    but I will quote what someone said recently
     
  10. NovelReaderAnonymous

    NovelReaderAnonymous Well-Known Member

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    Now I might be crazy but stay with me on this one but isn't this exactly how every company in the god damn world works? You work somewhere and if someone offers you a better job you go there? It's completely up to the translator's own free will to go wherever they want, what right do you have to block them from going somewhere else? Unless they signed a non-compete clause (which itself is pretty shit for most employee) then they are free to change job if they wish. Protecting your team? More like imprisoning them so they don't know what their actually worth. If you can't afford to keep your translator that's your problem. When Qidan poached CK and several WW translators the people at WW wish them the best because its their decision to move on to what they thought was a better place. Ofc what happened later is a different story. (aka CK constantly trying to shit talk WW)

    Oh this is hilarious, ya lets go back to everyone translating 3 chapters a week and never have a completed novel in 10 years. Its so stupid I'm almost at a lost of words. Your logic is basically no one wants to translate the novel I like so its WW's fault? Just because WW is getting lic doesn't mean everyone else has to or will do it. If its something difficult to lic and ww doesn't do it then someone else can if they want to, not like ww is enforcing every translator to go legit.

    No everyone here has just hated him for a long time. He is probably the second most hate person here after Qidan. Every now and then he make a post like this to make sure people still remember who he is.
     
  11. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    We are in an illegal or gray area. So no rules.
    It is the law of the jungle.
    People will poach your talent if you are stupid enough to provide them with the contact information.

    I have only had one translator that I recruited from this community which I regret.
    He was complaining about issues which in itself is fine to me in an email but when you have Guan Zhong a staff of Wuxiaworld at the time responding to my threads and complaining about the same issues then you know that someone is poisoning the mind of the translator.

    I clearly told the translator: I cannot pay you as much you ask because I do not make that much.

    The point was this: Everyone here knew the translator so if they had any issues with me, they could easily poison the translator against me.

    It is pretty laughable because the translator joined me from a website that is now defunct and didn't pay him. But he was asking me to pay the same rates as the now dead website which is called Novels n Chill

    This was back in 2017, my website as not even a year old. I did not even know the basics of ads and was actually borrowing money to keep the website afloat.
    I learnt a valuable lesson
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2020
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  12. FudgeNouget

    FudgeNouget Well-Known Member

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    I normally stay out of drama like this, but Wuji, you need to get your head out of your ass.

    Keeping the names of translators private, unless requested directly by the translator themselves, is simply not giving them credit for their work. If poaching is what you're worried about, just sharing their nickname won't do anything unless there is a way for people to contact the translators directly.

    Translators that moved to WuxiaWorld did so out of their own will. Having your translators poached is NOT the norm. And if your translator wants to go to another site, that simply means they are not receiving enough compensation for their work. You do not own your translators, they have no obligation to work on any novels on your website as they are unlicensed, and you also do not own any translations done by your translators.

    My biggest gripe is about the so-called need to have smaller websites for "unique stories". No, that is not the case at all. At least, not anymore. At a time when more publishers are jumping into the official translation scene, or trying to, having their novels translated without a license (i.e. stolen), only hurts the chance at the work being officially translated. If you enjoy reading novels and want to see more of them in English, support licensed work.

    The success of licensed work means more publishers will be willing to entrust their novels to translators and platforms for overseas distribution. Seeing their work stolen will only discourage that, and readers will only be left with slow, illegal, and never-sure-if-it-will-get-DMCAed novels.

    EDIT: To add on further, fan translated novels lose out on a lot of value. If you are a fan translation website, don't pretend to be a business. If you don't have licenses, don't try to become a business.

    And to be clear, you are not in a "grey area". Profiting off of unlicensed work, or simply hosting translations of unlicensed work, is illegal. It's piracy. There is no grey area.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2020
  13. DocB

    DocB "I see you, little mouse! Run along"

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    too bad you learned the wrong lesson
    so basically you were bad at business, he called you out on it
    and what you learned from it is not, "the market value of translators is this high", but "if i keep the translator from learning their value and as long as i ain't making too much money i can keep them underpaid"
     
  14. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    You are a staff of Wuxiaworld if I remember correctly. Can you discredit what I said?
    You are obviously biased
    Why is the founder of Wuxiaworld responding to my posts on Centinni drama that has nothing to do with Wuxiaworld?
    Sorry to break it to you but you are talking about a perfect world were people are saints.
    Licensing novels has its drawbacks.
    As others have pointed out on here, I didn't even need to give an example
    Give translators credit? Please how stupid do you think I am?
    Why don't you write the name of the plumber on your toilet and give him credit for fixing your toilet.

    I do not translate Chinese cultivation novels because competing with Wuxiaworld and Webnovels would be stupid.
    My website focuses on Japanese novels because I know its stupid to compete
    In the future, I intend to move my Chinese translators to translating Japanese novels from Chinese raws.

    EDIT: If my translators were treated as badly as you all claim. They would be making threads on here complaining every day. This is the internet I cannot exactly stop them. I do not have them locked up in basement in chains. There won't be working with me since as far back as 2017
    You guys are so stuck up that you do not see how stupid you are
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2020
  15. Milanin

    Milanin [Reader] [???] [Freeloader]

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    Ayy, Wuji going against WW... All we need is Qidian to toss a representative into the mix and we have the TOP3 that had the most controversy being tossed around the forums, that I remember
     
  16. NovelReaderAnonymous

    NovelReaderAnonymous Well-Known Member

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    Well I don't think you really want people to answer that question but here a fun little history lesson. Back then Atari became huge and got brought out by WB(?) the people from WB had your same thought. They didn't credit any of the game developers and told the game developers that they were as important to the game as the person who screw in the screws on the carts. You know what happened? All the developers left to make their own studios and made a lot of money while Atari basically caused the gaming industry as the time to crash until Nintendo revived it later.
     
  17. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    In a perfect world, everyone would be able to afford licenses.
    Readers will pay for all the content they consume.
    And you would write the name of your plumber in your toilet because paying is not enough.
    We must give credit.
    Thanks for all the replies including the ones in my ignore list that I didn't bother to read.
    I apologize that I cannot afford licenses like Wuxiaworld.
    I just take down novels when J-novel club asks.
    Cheers!

    PS I am publishing 4 chapters of Itai no Wa to celebrate the success of this thread :blob_pompom::blobparty:
     
  18. FudgeNouget

    FudgeNouget Well-Known Member

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    You do not need to be unbiased to discredit someone who is simply not telling the truth and painting the world in a certain way for their benefit.

    Why is the founder of AsianHobbyist responding to a post on Centinni drama that has nothing to do with AsianHobbyist?

    Maybe it's because it has to do with the translations scene, and it just so happens that WuxiaWorld is the biggest, highest-paying website in the industry with more knowledge in the space than any other website.

    "Not everyone in the world is a saint so it's okay to murder, rape, and steal."
    Sorry to break it to you, but the status quo of the world has nothing to do with the morality of doing illegal things.

    I'm failing to understand why this is stupid. People write their names when they write and publish research papers. People write the names of authors when citing papers. Why is giving proper credit where it is due something to argue about?

    It just seems like you're afraid that your translators will find out that they're being underpaid, uncredited, and mistreated.

    If you have nothing to be ashamed about, you would not fear this.
     
  19. DragonMage18

    DragonMage18 Outcast

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    Well, it does not come as a suprise. Afterall, there is poaching wherever there can be. And in some industies you have to poach just to stay in the same position as you are in right now.

    As for you not crediting your TL I won't blame you, buisness is buisness. and if the TL realy want to be credited, he can just get it into the contract that it will be done. OR just not TL anymore for you unless it happens.
    Well, there is also the middle ground where you credit it to a site spesific nickname, so the TL have something to refere back to, to show of his work later. Basicly a name the TL agrees to only use on your website, atleast they are credited, and poaching becomes harder to do.


    BTW, anothere reason people might hate you wuji is the slow realese rate on the great novels you got, since people usualy actualy follow the "rules" regarding when its okay to pick up novels and not.
     
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  20. gr8 b8 m8

    gr8 b8 m8 Well-Known Member

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