Thank you for your response. I’m glad to know that I wasn’t imagining things regarding the short time frame.
I agree with all of you. Viki should give the volunteer community the respect it deserves and be open and honest about their plans for the future of the volunteer community instead of leaving all of us to conjecture about what is happening and what it all means. From my observation, V has been increasingly reluctant to engage with the volunteer community over the past few years. My personal feeling is that V does not want to deal with the fallout that an announcement of the termination of the volunteer model would bring, so it just implements things quietly and refuses to communicate with the volunteers. I feel this stance may have its roots in the aftermath from the big Volunteer Strike. I was not an active volunteer at that time, so I can only comment from what I observed as a viewer and subscriber. What I saw was V in panic mode during that time, and I was expecting Viki to make an announcement then that they were terminating the volunteer model. But V was able to meet with the Volunteers and together they came to an agreement. I was impressed with both sides for being able to keep the volunteer model going. That being said, in the years since I observed Viki slowly making the changes to lessen volunteer involvement and Viki’s reliance on volunteers. They obviously did not want to be put in that position again. However, Viki fails to understand that this silence and refusal to engage is much worse behavior than being transparent. To be honest, the worst thing is not knowing why things are happening the way they currently are. I truly hope that Viki will change and be more open with the volunteers.
Yes! I completely agree. This uncertainty is very upsetting.
Thanks to everyone for posting your thoughts. I appreciate them.
Yes, I agree. It’s high time for Viki or its management of this Viki Community to address this issue and make known their intention/policy, whatever that may be.
Come on, show the community the respect it deserves.
What is happening
I think they never read what we are writing. Let’s try to tag someone (if it still exists, or it became a mythological creature ). I evoke @vikicommunity
I’m guessing they’ve already read our conversation, since the most recent channel wasn’t even posted in “Project Finder”; it was assigned directly to the vikisubteam. That’s actually what they’ve been doing for a while now: they do things to indirectly let us know the direction we are heading. It seems that for them this is all this community “deserves” after such a long time of contributing.
If they are not allowed by the higher-ups, they can’t tell us anything. And this is actually what Viki has been doing for a while: less contact with the contributors. Because what can go wrong for them when there is no communication?
I have stopped visiting the Project Finder, I haven’t checked it for months now.
This treatment of volunteers hurts so much that I now watch “elsewhere” even dramas that are available on Viki.
Okay, I had a look now. No Koreans shows whatsoever. No Japanese, no Chinese ones either. Zero.
Thank you for your input. It is good to have additional confirmation that CM positions are being posted for shorter time frames than before. And now, it seems that fewer CM positions are being posted overall in the Project Finder, as you and others say they check and find nothing posted, often for days. It is very sad. I agree with you that the volunteers deserve better treatment.
I guess it’s time to pack our bags and move out. I feel like in a big company, where low employee and their hard work take company higher and later they are slowly in silence are removed. And it’s nothing new that company have favorite employee and those who they dont need anymore. But tho it’s their side, and they can do what they want. To be true I don’t expect any respond since when you use Help Center the reply is always automatical so I don’t expect much anymore. Nothing will change anything, we all see that the way their heading is clear and were not needed anymore since AI come in hand.
I have to admit that I was surprised the other day, I got a show that I found on project finder. I would lie if I said that I hadnt applied to many shows and thought that I was lacking in some way (I’m happy as a CS but I wanted to manage a channel on my own at least once).
Actually, dramas are usually drop in the CM Project Finder (starting from 15:00 - in Italy) but they disappear after few hours. Try and see. I think they cannot do otherwise, so for a few, useless (for us) hours there’s something in it, something which is already of the staff. They let the CM Project Finder (and many other things) as it was, but it’s already like a door the majority of us hasn’t got the key anymore.
I guess it is a good bye to Viki.
I honestly only came to help around as much as possible, because many senior vikiers have already left the site. It was not the same anymore. I lost friends too.
I guess we will just have to lie around and just WATCH
I only hope another kind of VIIKII (the original name of this site) will be created again someday. The idea was absolutely UNIQUE, asian fans from over the world would come to one site, have fun helping translating, segmenting, editing and learning new languages while spending a good time- and now everything is gone.
It was due to come sooner or later. I saw it coming
Several features were being removed little by little, reducing our time on Viki.
@kakashiandme, @cgwm808
Sheree, Connie: It’s been 17 years of our life here. We’ve done well so far!
I find it ironic that viikii was originally formed with the intent to globalize entertainment and fans with skills in at least two languages were the means of fulfilling that intent. The founders of viikii.net, a non-profit which eventually became viki.com, envisioned entertainment without the borders of inability to understand the source language of the entertainment.
Rakuten has been the largest online retailer in Japan for over twenty years. In 2010, Hiroshi Mirikitani, CEO of Rakuten, made an unprecedented announcement for a large company in Japan that all Rakuten business, whether internal or external would be conducted in English. He explained this decision was to promote the globalization of Rakuten’s businesses. How Rakuten’s Shift to English Transformed Its Culture.
In 2013, Rakuten bought viki.com as part of its effort to globalize entertainment, just as Rakuten became owner of the Golden State Warriors and FC Barcelona.
And now, the original globalization engine of viki are being de-commissioned without any transparency. Despite the dwindling number of opportunities for the contributor community, the official word is now fiction:
“Subtitles on Viki are created by fans from around the globe through a one-of-a-kind process that produces subtitles that can’t be found anywhere else.” … “Once a show begins, videos are uploaded without subtitles”. [https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015389988-Subtitle-Creation-on-Viki]
“Our passionate contributor community subtitles content on Viki” [https://support.viki.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414915578515-Why-are-subtitles-missing-in-a-specific-language]
Viki’s value was commercially successful globally because of the availability of volunteer produced subtitles in multiple languages. It’s estimated that there are 90 million viewers. Despite viki’s global audience, rather than secure exclusive global licenses, many titles at viki are and have been secured with only regional licenses. Suppose Drama A is licensed to only viki for the Western Hemisphere where English, Spanish, Portuguese and French are the principal languages. The producers of Drama A then license Drama A to other regions of the world which are fluent in the same languages. Despite the western hemisphere license for viki, viewers in the western hemisphere can use vpn to view the content from other regions. Thus, the management of viki perceived it lost paying customers because of faster availability of subtitles from other regions of the world. If viki obtained globally exclusive rather than regional licenses, there would be no other subtitles before viki’s, and no need for speed. To get faster subtitles, viki uses paid subbers and we have reached the point where there are no volunteers at all on most new viki content and thus no need for channel managers.
So it is ironic that we volunteers enabled the globalization of K drama at viki but are being discarded.
). I evoke 
