Thank you all for sharing your experiences and ideas!
@oriya
That’s a good idea. I probably should write some kind of standard reply as well to give people who are really interested a chance/some tips and not writing individual messages all the time even when some don’t read/reply at all.
I also got messages for subtitling sometimes for new on air shows that only had few released episodes or none episode at all in other languages but the text says something like: Hi I want to translate episode 42 (so the last episode or almost last episode) what doesn’t make sense but I think that is the project finder message system’s fault in a way (and if that means the person did watch almost or all episodes it would be a plus because then translating would be easier for them compared to someone who wants to translate but doesn’t know anything about the story/characters and did not want to watch it at all).
@helenawang5717_57
Some informative description as a popup window while using the project finder might help or also some kind of guideline when one hits that ‘join the community’-button. For beginners it can be hard to find the information they need because some don’t find the forums and the main page is not well designed for volunteers but only for viewers, sadly.
So a info box could include aspects like oriya mentioned for the messafes she writes to beginners. I always feel that there is too less easy to find information available for potential volunteers/beginners.
@irmar
Some beginners I met are great as person and also as volunteer, some are a catastrophe that I’d call Zeitfresser. If you just meet 2-3 new people at once it’s not such a big deal but since corona lockdown I got in touch with over 10 beginners and only few take volunteering seriously and are able to communicate so I lost most of my patience and nerves during the past weeks.
This year I also took an older project as a moderator to give beginners the chance to gain some experience and work without deadlines/time pressure. I think it is a good way, it’s fine for beginners but blocked by VIKI because only full QC are allowed to work on it (beginners cannot even work on it when they have a paid VIKIpass!!!).
So in the end I had to take them for new on air shows.
It’s frustrating since now I have a project I only took as possibility for beginners that I cannot use for this purpose; full QC volunteers are busy with new/on air projects (what I can understand), some of them also wouldn’t work on it because you can just watch it on amazon and it makes not so much sense to work on it here while there are many shows on VIKI that are new and only available here… so yeah… I either have to abandon the project as moderator, translate it by myself (what I can’t do right now because of the other new on air projects) or wait (hope) that VIKI might open it at some point for beginners/non QC volunteers for training.
It was not clear/visible that this project is full QC only. I cannot know - in case I’d take another older project for training purposes - if a project is QC only or not. So in the end I probably stick to new projects which are interesting for full QC volunteers so the project will be finished in a certain amount of time (and ironically the new/on air projects are usually open for anyone no matter if the person has VIKIpass or not and no matter if the person has QC or not… - I’m talking about Cdramas).
VIKI as a company lives from the volunteering community but there are too many obstacles that make it difficult for those who want to become a part of the volunteer community or are already part of the volunteer community.
VIKI should open/tag certain projects as training projects so e.g. if a moderator is willing to help/guide beginners and takes such a show people could see this is a training project and when it is unfinished it is not because this moderator doesn’t take care for a project.
Beginners could also see then in which channels/projects they should gain experience without deadlines/time pressure.
The project finder should get a filter with ‘beginner projects’ so people who are interested could directly find a fitting show…
This would also avoid new/on air projects/teams too be influenced by certain aspects that could happen, because with training projects a moderator could say, okay when you translated ~3 parts and it’s fine and you’re able to handle deadlines you can participate on a new/on air show (and when it is a training project there would be also no need to edit/retranslate the wrong parts in case someone didn’t do it right… you could give feedback then so the person could make progress step by step but when it is a new/on air show you cannot let more or less wrong parts without editing them fast because the quality would suffer too much and the viewers would be disappointed).
The training shows could also have some kind of ‘subtitle overlay’ in the way that moderators see it and can give feedback but viewers wouldn’t see it (in case there is already a full version of subtitling for a certain language).
Of course that means more effort and IT work for the VIKI company but I think they should invest ressources for the volunteering community as well.
@procrastinadorass2
Thank you for your post!