i have refrained myself from making any comments about anything regarding this issue, but since now things are somewhat heating up, i feel obliged to at least state my personal opinion.
myself? i have nothing against matt and HE and other people who are helping out SHscan –-you guys get A for effort and A+ for stirring things up XD--- but i am against multiple groups scanlating the same title. the reason? many.
this is going to be like one of my old posts: long. so bear with me. and don't even think about arguing with me unless you have read every sentence carefully and correctly understood the meaning of each.
you guys are still young (at least i know matt is), so you might have never thought of this: when you actually finish highschool and get into the real world, you'll realize how much time you actually have to spend dealing with things in real life. there is no such thing as getting a good 8-hour sleep once you go to college or get a job. most people are happy if they get 4 hours every day because they have so many things that they have to do. hence the time they can allocate to provide scanlations decreases, and the release speed slows down.
understand the paragraph above well before you get angry at null for being a few weeks behind. they have other things to do in real life.
of course the same case can be argued for matt and friends. you guys have life too, but you still make time to do this. that's understandable.
here's another thing to consider. null has existed for... many years. you guys just started less than a week. think of the psychological aspect. since null is an existing group, people expect a lot from them. people want them to be on top of things simply because they're an existing group, and are therefore considered a "pro" compared to SHscan. null has been known to be on top of things at some time in the past, and it's only natural that people expect this consistency. i mean, come on now, what kind of a "pro" would be on top of things for three weeks and then stop doing things for the next three weeks? in pro sports, if you don't play consistently, you get axed from the first team. same thing here.
matt, i hope you are perfectly aware of the consequences of making scanlations. it's a VICIOUS world. you claim that your group wants to be a speed release group, giving everyone a somewhat decent scanlation before null makes their HQ release. that's perfectly fine. but realize that as time passes by, people's expectation of your group will increase, so don't be shocked if about 2 months from now you have people bitching at your group for not having a scanlated chapter released within, say for the extreme case, 3 hours of LQ raw release. "what kind of speed release is this? it's not speedy!" is the type of responses that you should expect getting once you slow down JUST A LITTLE BIT. so i hope you guys are perfectly aware of that.
right now people are supporting your effort, and you should be happy about this. but just be aware that history has proven that the amount of support one gets always goes downhill with time, and eventually, provided that you guys will go on for a couple of years, you will be in the same position null is right now.
here is why i am against multiple groups scanlating one title: it causes unnecessary drama. no, seriously, it does. the old group will think "are we not good enough?" and "you kids are too whiny." why the new group will think "hey, this is not to compete with you guys" but even after those are made explicitly clear, there is still some hostility in the atmosphere. my reason for being against multiple groups doing one title has nothing to do with editing or translating quality of one over the other, but more of the hostility it ALWAYS creates. if you SHscan and NULL people can stop being so hostile with each other, then i would not care.
and about the complains on null translation being inaccurate: try to be on their shoes and think about it. if they transliterate everything, they have NO WAY to protect themselves against people who steal their translation. of course a scanlation group will always try to provide the most accurate translation, but that has a lot of disadvantages. when someone steals their translation, the thief can simply say "hey, this is a transliteration. that's what they actually mean in japanese..." and null can't really argue with that. thus some lines are deliberately changed to provide the countermeasure. and no, this is not an explanation given by a null member to me. it's just LOGICAL THINKING.
so SHscan people: please, be aware of the consequences of what you are doing. i know some people have voiced out concerns over the speed of releases, but this might very well be a case of active minority against passive majority. what i mean by that is that the people who are impatient always comment on the slow releases, while people who are patient never really say anything. even if there are more patient people, at the end of the day, only the voices of the minorities get heard.
NULL people: please, don't take a hostile stance. think about it: just because 10, 20, 30 people voice constant complaints, that doesn't mean you have to satisfy them. i bet you guys have around 4-5000 different people who constantly download your scanlation, so think about it: the amount of people who voice complains and do something about it is NEGLIGIBLE compared to the amount of people who don't complain. it's not worth the hostility. keep doing what you are doing, let them do what they want to do.
and OTHER IMPATIENT PEOPLE: be patient.
i was gonna type more, but my girl is waiting in bed, so that comes first XD.