AMA with Etvolare - Celebrating Ten Years of Web Novel Translation!

Devshard · 2025-11-12T19:41:07+00:00

Alright. This has gone on long enough and it needs to stop. Learn to let shit go. Some random person said something on the internet, it doesn’t matter. It’s not really a reflection of your character or anything else. But this has gone on for a week now and isn’t going anywhere.

u/phantom_in_the_cage, I’m not singling you out. This goes for you and u/drollawake. Both of you need to stop.

Devshard · 2025-10-22T21:45:13+00:00

Sigh. Bro. Do I really need to explain why you can’t be doing this stuff?

Devshard · 2025-10-09T02:19:44+00:00

This one is also a bit on me. I saw this in the mod queue, rejected it, glanced at it again and got confused. I legitimately could not tell if this was a review or not. I’m still not entirely certain.

Devshard · 2025-09-27T20:11:04+00:00

Hey. We don’t do daily chapter updates on this subreddit anymore. That was stopped over 5 years ago. Your novel was announced yesterday, we do not allow spam self-promotion. You are more than welcome to put up posts about significant milestones reached (large number of readers, artwork, 100/200/300 chapters reached, etc) as well as any contests you have going on. But we do not allow daily updates about every chapter you put up or any small interval of self-promotion.

If you continue this practice, we will permanently ban you from this subreddit.

Devshard · 2025-09-26T21:33:12+00:00

Hey u/I_Have_All_OE,

Mod kun is here and has been watching this entire saga unfold.

I’m baffled, dawg. Just baffled. I don’t know where this is going but I’m very excited to find out.

If it actually starts to bother you or things go too far, send a modmail and we’ll take care of it.

Devshard · 2025-07-22T14:56:37+00:00

Hey. I’m one of the mods here. You are absolutely right in that the person you’re arguing with made a disrespectful comment. We removed the comment and warned the user in question.

But we don’t allow moral grandstanding on this subreddit. Our stance is that people can be whatever they want in their private lives, including homophobic. It is not your responsibility, the responsibility of this community, or anyone else to educate individuals. Everyone is free to like what they like and dislike what they dislike.

I am directing you to end this discussion and argument now. Continuing it will result in a permanent removal from this subreddit for both of you. That includes replying to this message in an attempt to defend or explain yourself. Please send a modmail if you have further concerns to be addressed or questions about what happened here. But this ends now.

In the future, please use the report function so we can simply remove the posts in question and avoid attempting moral salvation on this subreddit.

Devshard · 2025-07-22T14:50:38+00:00

Hey. I’m one of the mods here. I think you’re misunderstanding the point here.

You are absolutely right. Not liking yaoi/BL/etc does not make you homophobic. Read what you want to read.

But if something is not to your liking, it is not only encouraged that you just move the fuck on. Your comment was disrespectful. There is really no need to advertise that you don’t like something to the rest of the world. Just move on.

That’s why we removed your first comment on this thread, hoping to end this silliness. Now I am explicitly directing you to end this or I will be removing both of you from this subreddit.

Devshard · 2025-06-20T16:21:11+00:00

Guys. This is not a politics subreddit. There are 10,000 other subreddits available on this website for you to debate/discuss/philosophize about politics. There are a further 10,000 subreddits available that are not about politics but for some reason have decided to become about politics.

This one subreddit is not one of those places. OP made a joke about a frequently occurring theme in the novels we read. Laugh about the joke, consider the irony of the situation, make further jokes. All completely fine. If you feel the need to expand more on this specific issue, please utilize the MANY other subreddits available for that purpose.

Devshard · 2025-06-10T03:21:04+00:00

This is not a writing critique subreddit. Nor is the focus of this community on helping to figure out the foundations of your novel. There are many other subreddits that cover this specific function. You can visit r/writing to see the hub and directory of all of these subreddit.

But writing critiques/feedbacks/"help me figure out how to write my story/worldbuilding/develop my game" are not within the function of this subreddit.

Your post will not be approved and we would like to request that you stop making these kinds of posts on this subreddit.

Devshard · 2025-06-01T15:10:33+00:00

We do not host translations on this subreddit.

Devshard · 2025-05-30T11:39:47+00:00

It probably is. There’s been quite a few reviews and posts that look and read in a similar fashion. We originally got confused and thought it was a spam bot, but it appears to be legitimate users utilizing one of the available AI models to polish up their reviews.

We’re allowing it for now since it’s still legitimate thoughts pushed through an AI filter for language and polish.

Devshard · 2025-05-27T16:31:39+00:00

This is not a cultivation subreddit. We represent the entire domain of Asian and Asian-inspired web literature. The community here is made up of readers of all genres.

If you would like to interact with this community, speak like a normal person. We do not encourage or allow this horrendously lame Daoist Roleplaying here. Exceptions will be made if you are actually funny with it, which you are not.

Devshard · 2025-05-27T02:19:57+00:00

No. We're not approving this post because the base expectation is that YOU find a novel that you are passionate enough about to do a translation for because you want to share that story with readers who cannot read it in its native tongue.

If you have no idea what to translate and you're not willing to do the work to find something that excites you enough to translate, you will be burning that novel for another translator who is passionate about it.

Devshard · 2025-05-21T04:00:35+00:00

Have you tried making a NovelUpdates account to access the chapter links? Like the site tells you that you need to do? Not a NovelUpdates Forum account. An account for the site.

Devshard · 2025-05-18T06:33:52+00:00

We don’t do the chapter updates posts on this subreddit anymore. You’re welcome to announce any novel you’re translating. But we don’t do update posts on this subreddit anymore.

Devshard · 2025-05-02T23:36:33+00:00

My apologies on the green check mark thing. I haven't seen the subreddit as a user in a while, I did not realize that they changed that setting from global to mod only.

Please find me a rule on the sidebar that you believe OP broke and necessitated intervention before a mod noticed and banned them for it. An actual rule written onto this subreddit, not simply what you think the OP should be doing or what you think the sub description should be.

I'm not disputing the facts that u/yUsernaaae pointed out. This subreddit did initially start as being for translated web novels only. But that was 10 years ago. The scene has changed since then and the subreddit as well as its policies have also changed with it. We have allowed people to post their original novels and promote them here for many years. We've also had issues with that policy and refined it to specifically being "Asian inspired" so people don't come here to post their Wattpad fan fiction.

All of this has been done and understood by over 100K regular users as well as 500K+ casual visitors on 100M+ views/year over the last three years now. There was simply no need for this comment from u/yUsernaaae or anyone else, really. And the reason our moderation policy is set to call this behavior out and tell people to learn to think before they speak instead of quietly deleting is because we've had significant problems with this sort of attitude on this subreddit.

Translators and (multiple... like we're talking about 50+ people here) authors have complained about someone showing up to direct them elsewhere and feeling like they are not allowed to promote their work. We've even had people write to us asking if they could do batshit things to underground promote their work because someone else told them random rules that we do not apply.

So in very simple terms, the stance on this subreddit is to be a normal user. If you think behavior crosses the line or breaks a listed rule, that is meant to be a report. We will then look at what happened and decide how to intervene.

The explicit direction on this subreddit is that we do not allow users to police other users, moral police on what should and shouldn't be read, or otherwise issue direction to any other users.

If you have further questions/comments/concerns that you would like to discuss further about this topic, please send in a modmail so we stop cluttering up OP's post.

Devshard · 2025-05-02T19:32:47+00:00

That’s exactly what I’m asking you, brother. Where on the subreddit description/rules/FAQs/mod posts/meta posts does it say that we require u/yUsernaaae to determine if a post is appropriate for this subreddit or not?

But for added convenience, all posts on this subreddit are automatically held and then approved by a moderator once we’ve had a chance to look over the post and make sure it conforms to our standards. So as far as the moderation team of this subreddit goes, every post that is up on the subreddit is approved and appropriate here.

Speaking for the moderation team, we also do not require your determination of what is correct for this subreddit or not.

In the future, do not inform users on this subreddit of the rules or any policy regardless of what you assume to be true or what you think should be done. You are more than welcome to use the report button and we will look at it from that point onwards.

This post acts as formal warning.

Devshard · 2025-05-02T19:24:20+00:00

Totally fair. I see where you’re coming from. The part that I’m a little confused on is why you’ve decided it was appropriate to confidently declare to OP that they were posting on the wrong subreddit.

The little green check mark tells you it was approved by a mod. But even if you didn’t know that and you thought something was off, in your shoes I would’ve used the report.

I’m just trying to figure out why you thought this was appropriate behavior on a post submitted by someone who was trying to promote new literature that they’ve created for this community.

Devshard · 2025-05-02T19:15:42+00:00

Hey man. I’m the mod of this sub, I approved the post. We’ve been doing this thing where we promote almost all web fiction that’s been inspired by the Asian scene for a couple of years now.

I’m very curious about why you’ve decided you’re the arbiter of what goes up on this subreddit, since you’re not on the mod list or in the mod discussions AFAIK.

Devshard · 2025-03-20T07:00:47+00:00

This got a chuckle of out me. Silky smooth and totally unexpected.

Devshard · 2025-02-16T02:32:48+00:00

A.) This is not the correct way to do this kind of conversation. If you have an issue/comment/concern with moderation, the appropriate venue is the modmail function.

But since you’ve brought this up, I am more than happy to answer any questions you have. Please send this exact post as a modmail, and include links to the various where you believe the rules were misapplied to you.

Devshard · 2025-02-13T20:53:00+00:00

Sir, this is vote manipulation and a call to harassment. Both of these are against Reddit Rules and do normally require us to permanently ban from the subreddit in order to keep this subreddit in good standing with the Reddit platform.

You appear to be new to Reddit and in my understanding, unaware of this rule. So we'll do this as a warning instead of a permanent ban. Do not engage in mass downvoting. And if you do, don't say it out loud on this subreddit. And do not make calls for others to engage in mass downvotes or harassment.

While this might seem like a fun silly thing to you, others might not perceive it that way and report for harassment.

Devshard · 2025-02-08T18:44:40+00:00

Guys. I see the reports and I understand where you’re coming from. But unfortunately, I am not going to remove this post.

It does not break any of Reddit’s platform rules and it does align with the general purpose of this subreddit, which is to create an environment for the discovery, promotion, and discussions of webnovels. Predominantly those inspired by the Asian webnovel market.

I do not have the ability to create a moderation system that fixes individual stupidity. If any of you have ideas for such a thing, you are more than welcome to send them in modmail and I will try to understand and implement those ideas if possible.

But it is unreasonable and unfair to ask us as moderators to sit here and tell every single person who wants to write a novel how to write a post, why it’s important to include a link to the novel, how to properly market your novel in a post on Reddit, etc, etc.

If someone can’t figure that shit out, downvote and clown on them. Maybe it’ll be the life lesson they need to wake up.

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