Mangahelpers was opened November 16th, 2005, although created a few months before by Terramare (former head of Shannaro! Edited Mangas) according to NJT's (your neighborhood friendly translator) preferences. MH was/is NJT's brainchild as he wanted to create a community for translators so they would be able to interact with each other more effectively on topics like mistranslations and perhaps even speed their own knowledge of Japanese up as well. He also wanted the readers to be able to feel more certain that the translations they were reading were as close to accurate as possible without losing the spirit of what was said. Terramare designed the first version of MH's website, although he preferred VB over SMF, but still wanted to experiment with SMF. It wouldn't be until the spring of 2007 that we would finally change over to VB, due to database problems, which Terramare would also help with.
MH started as an "arm" of NarutoForums when NF was having problems with traffic - on RAW Day, their site used to go down because there were so many people loading the pages again and again to see if their RAWs would appear. So NJT volunteered to have his own site serve as a temporary place for these links so that NF wouldn't go down on these days and could carry on with business as usual. That's how it was decided that MH would open to the public on November 16, 2005, and although we didn't intend originally to host files, we did for a time, until the summer of 2006 when we decided not to anymore.
Before MH opened, NJT asked several people from NF's staff to be able to overlook the site too, at least in the first few months. Nearly all the admins from NF at the time were adminned of MH as well, although they couldn't promise anything. Many of the "S-Mods" of NF (our version of global moderators) were moderated as well, but again, many left MH in the next year, their responsibilities at NF calling to them too often.
Although I was only a simple moderator at the time of Naruto Avenue, NF, and I was still pretty new to moderating, I guess NJT decided I had shown enough dedication to Naruto that he would admin me as well of MH. So that's how Gold Knight became admin of MH. I was asked to organize the forums as I saw best, recruit any promising moderators from our own members, and to serve as enforcer of the rules. Neither NJT or I wanted MH to be restricted only to Naruto discussion, so we wanted to expand to other mangas ASAP. I started with Bleach and others followed suit soon enough. Our partnership with NF would end when NF bought new servers, and soon we were able to go our own way and we weren't considered an "arm" of any other site anymore. Our "home-made" staff turned out to be outstanding and soon each contributed to MH in their own ways over the years. We've always had great support from our own members, as well. Although I've since stepped down as admin, there have been plenty of outstanding admins in my place since then - Winterlion, Bax, etc. The one permanent admin we have will always be NJT, though - the big man around here.
Although MH has become a huge site since then, our primary goals haven't really been changed, though.
You can see them here. Our goal has always been to help people here - be they translators, Manga Editors, or members, and we've always liked to promote manga. That's why we're called Mangahelpers.
