Hi everyone!
In the past weeks, nothing much has happened when we were reaching out to Viki staff here.
If there is anything you recall and want to be taken care of here at Discussions, please “quote” it here, so we can see the actual topic that it is about.
I will look for mine tomorrow …
So, if there are topics that need to be merged etc. note it here. So we can forward it all together, I can’t promise that everything will be taken care of, as the team at Viki is shorthanded just as we have guessed.
Thank you.
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@misswillowinlove
I think you had a delete question, about deleting a thread?
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Yes, I did, based on your June 1 reply to a comment posted by @shraddhasingh. There was a discussion about Trust Level 4 and how to get to that level.
I guess because I’m communicating with a varied group across multiple timezones, I’m going to end up with another long post/rant about what members of the Viki community should and should not be able to do to maintain order on what is theoretically OUR discussion board.
Because I tend to post late at night and mid morning, I have a long time in which to do Internet research and get in trouble.
Anyway, in your June 1 post . . .
I noted that Viki community members at Trust Level 4 can:
Get to trust level 4 by…
Manual promotion by staff only
(Possibly via a to-be-developed election system in the future)Users at trust level 4 can…
- Edit all posts
- Pin/unpin topic
- Close topics
- Archive topics
- Make topics unlisted
- Split and merge topics
- Reset topic bump date
- Daily like and edit limits increased by 3×
- Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post
- Can send personal messages to an email address
And I understand also that Trust Levels are established by sort of shadowy, unspecified people at Discourse.org, the folks who have created Viki’s in-house “chat platform.” And Trust Levels are awarded to members of the Viki volunteer community to keep them feeling as if their non-monetary contributions to Viki’s bottom line are as valuable as the contributions of paid staff. I still get that.
Yet, when I consider the sort of general chaos that characterizes the Discussion Board [multiple similar topics that overlap], drama timeline comments that show little social restraint [“Why the **** doesn’t he kiss her what a wast of my time”], and the fact that the Badgers have wondered what difference being awarded some badges makes . . .
It seems to me that there really isn’t any “housekeeping” as described above to maintain clear lines of communication, either among Viki community members and volunteers or between the volunteer community and Viki corporate.
The real housekeeper is, as far as I can tell, the unspecified folks at Discourse, not any Trust Level 4 people in the Viki community.
In theory, Viki community members and volunteers ALREADY have the ability to make the Viki community what they want it to be, with a high level of personal tolerance and respect and a high level of segmenting and subbing professionalism.
But I keep getting warned that, for instance,Viki doesn’t like community members or volunteers “quoting” from non-Viki streaming platforms. Unless it happens to be about Viki.
For example: I am doing fairly well so far at cleaning pre-subs for the C-drama Be There.
It is such a delightful story. It’s the Chinese version of Sex and the City in a way. Gal pals sticking together as they search for ways to make a difference in each other’s lives and the lives of those around them.
I would perhaps characterize it as Virtue and the City because it focuses on the Big Picture of positive human aspiration rather than shallow self-indulgence. I feel as if I have gotten to know more about Chinese culture and philosophy and even daily life through what I have been doing, and the team I am on has been super-helpful.
So I wrote a message of thanks and posted it to Team Discussion. I included a link to a beautiful YouTube video of Li ZiQi making all sorts of astounding treats for the Spring Festival. Just gorgeous and so full of family love.
I was gently admonished about that. Viki doesn’t like that. Viki community members who segment and sub cannot mention YouTube while segmenting and subbing can get their accounts flagged, but!
Over on the “other” discussion board where wild and crazy videos and comments multiply like baby rabbits . . . that’s no problem because that is internal and doesn’t affect the corporate bottom line. Well, as with some previous versions of Facebook, the community discussion board is off limits for people trying to sell stuff, and I get that.
Even though Viki is not legally liable for the poor choices of its users and subscribers, fans getting in fights down on the sidewalk can create negative and possibly damaging publicity for everyone fifty stories up in the penthouse suite. I have no problem with that.
But the attitude about what will and won’t get an account flagged . . . and the attitude about who deserves a high trust level and why . . . and the attitude that Discourse on behalf of Viki will grant certain self-policing authority to people who have been maintaining fansubbing civility and encouragement since before Viki was a “thing” . . . it just seems so ridiculous.
There are plenty of people ALREADY doing their best to keep the community discussion board a positive place. Why do they need Viki’s permission to do what common sense says should be done?
Why? Because if corporate can’t control it, corporate can’t monetize it.
Do Apple employees get to carry a Google-Fi enabled Moto G7 to work and use it in the lunch room?
Do Microsoft employees get to throw an iPad into a brief case and use it to take notes at a staff meeting?
Do Samsung employees get to bring an LG Stylo to work and plug in the charger so they have a backup phone just in case?
Then why would Viki community members, users, subscribers, subbers, and segmenters be allowed to freely take care of their own processes and problems and maintain order and communication in their own way?
In theory, “we” already have the capacity to self-police. Perhaps tonight I would amend my question to Why do we need Viki or its deputy Discourse.org to give us permission to take care of our own business?
Today I found an honors thesis posted on the website for the University of Texas at Austin where Matthew McConaughey teaches in the Department of Radio-Television-Film.
(from Wikipedia . . . he’s from MY tribe, and it isn’t the Ice Tribe, honey)
Aside from a few typos, the author’s thesis abstract points out very well what’s at stake for Viki. Got to maintain tight corporate control while maintaining the illusion that there is no corporate control.
Because, fans and fansubbers doing it for love . . . Viki can’t live with that, but it can’t live without that, either.
I have highlighted the sentences I find most interesting.
ABSTRACT
Author: Taylore Nicole Woodhouse
Title: “A Community Unlike Another Other”: Incorporating Fansubbers into Corporate
Capitalism on Viki.comSupervising Professors: Dr. Suzanne Scott and Dr. Youjeong Oh
Viki.com, founded in 2008, is a streaming site that offers Korean (and other East Asian)
television programs with subtitles in a variety of languages. Unlike other K-drama distribution sites that serve audiences outside of South Korea, Viki utilizes fan-volunteers, called fansubbers, as laborers to produce its subtitles. Fan subtitling and distribution of foreign language media in the United States is a rich fan practice dating back to the 1980s, and Viki is the first corporate entity that has harnessed the productive power of fansubbers.In this thesis, I investigate how Viki has been able to capture the enthusiasm and productive capacity of fansubbers. Particularly, I examine how Viki has been able to monetize fansubbing in while still staying competitive with sites who employee trained, professional translators. I argue that Viki has succeeded in courting fansubbers as laborers by co-opting the concept of the “fan community.” I focus on how Viki strategically speaks about the community and builds its site to facilitate the functioning of its community so as to encourage fansubbers to view themselves as semi-professional laborers instead of amateur fans. In reframing the role of the fansubbing community, Viki creates a new image for what being a fansubber means and why fansubbing is valuable that emphasizes creating value for Viki over creating value for the fan community.
I would love to have the opportunity to explain to the author of this thesis that I am certainly neither a “semi-professional laborer” nor “an amateur fan.” And that holds for everyone else here as well.
Aside from that quibble, I think Ms. Taylore Nicole Woodhouse has it right. It’s about Viki, not about us. Viki needs us but doesn’t trust us. We don’t need Viki’s permission to keep a clean house and treat each other civilly, yet they continue to create the illusion that we do.
Another question would be: why bother?
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I need to come back later to read all of your comment, I am just too tired at the moment. I have read a third to half of it and wonder if you misunderstood what I wanted to offer.
Actually I didn’t want to discuss the why, by whom and when? I wanted to find the things that needed to be taken care of.
Sorry, this stuff is too much for me now, I need a painkiller and hopefully will feel better in an hour.
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@misswillowinlove
@entwyfhasbeenfound, this is what I’m referring to, this convo below.
@entwyfhasbeenfound you then said this (◠‿◕) ☞ 
@misswillowinlove
The different posting forums of Viki, operates under similar guidelines, with differing specification. I think others have been admonished, myself included. The funny thing is, it’s done in a haze. Maybe due to too much, so to speak, air pollution.
☞ 
I agree, there is a bit more, wiggle, room here in Discussions. 
I do like that, that I can watch links here without the hassel of commercials. Will that change in the future? It might, when money is involved.
Trust is more for relationships. As you’ve so keenly observed, it’s a business.
Aaah! Yea!
To make it more understandable what I meant …
We had the problem with continue watching and 3 different topic talking about it, so I now handed it over directly, since it seems the problem might be solved or nearly. I forwarded these 3 mentioned topics to merger them.
Okay, we will see how it works out.
I didn’t mean to discuss what Viki staffs job is in general, but right now the things that we mentioned to them, but not much happened the past 3-4 weeks.
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I think lutra made this topic for people who had bug problems and stuff that could be fixed quickly. Maintenance jobs because the Viki staff hadn’t been available the past weekend and would have missed any cries for help.
About the Trust Level thing, I didn’t completely understand what you’re getting at, but it’s definitely not “shady” people who police our discussions. The timed comments are policed by the volunteer team’s CMs and Mods and our Discussions are policed by users we already know. I’ve had a post deleted and a thread merged/edited, all by @jeslyni, who we all know is a Viki employee. @mariliam also used to do that before she left.
I’ve never posted a YT link in the Team Discussion, so I don’t know what’s up with that. I personally don’t think Viki would delete an account just over that. In the guidelines, it says Viki will delete an account only after multiple cases of multiple flagging and reports.
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@leerla73 @entwyfhasbeenfound
I guess I might be really sick, or the painkillers killed my ability to follow what you are talking about, …
My brain right now only works in a straight line, in general I feel better, but my throat is a mess and my mind is numb, my body tells me to sleep, sleep, sleep it off.
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Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing big. Rest well and I hope you get well soon!
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Lutra
Please take care of your health first. Sleeping is one way. Nourishing your system is another, give it what it needs, for best results. Take care of you!
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Trust levels in Discussions are completely independent of contribution to Viki by segmenting, subtitling or other. The highest trust level a non-Viki-staff member can have is Regular (which in itself is a badge), and at this point a lot of very active individuals hold it who don’t at all contribute to the translations at Viki.com.
Hmm… Team Discussion (a parallel tab to Subtitle Editor and Segment Editor) has a very specific role - one to facilitate the workflow of multiple teams across all languages. The language is usually dry and professional, as well as highly organised, in order to quickly find information relevant to you. Posting a video with a usually pretty big thumbnail, a video irrelevant to work on that particular project might make it more difficult for other volunteers who use the Team Discussion on a regular basis. That is why we have Discussions (this platform), as well as the Comments filed under each show’s front page, to freely discuss and share our thoughts and what inspires them 
And thank the team. Believe it or not, lots of team members regularly check Comments section. Mostly to clean up malicious comments, buy hey 
If you see massive amount of verbal garbage in Timed comments, please do send a note to the CM or English Editor to clean them up.
You said it yourself, the still on-going problem with Continue Watching section not updating. We received no feedback information on the topic whatsoever! Not even “Hi, Community, we have registered the issue and are working on it.” 
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Help center is slow too
Usually they respond within 24-72 hrs
i filed a ticket 4 days ago and no response.
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We know that one person left, I don’t think they have a replacement, or if they will get one. It’s time for vacation, so imagine another pair of hands missing, it adds on.
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Actually Sean replied to me !
I pmed him. But he told me to file a ticket because the problem i have can only be solved faster by the help center.
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Well, my subtitles aren’t updating. And I’ve been subtitling for more then 30 min. now. Weird. 
Edit: Neither my contribution number is changing.
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From my perspective there is personal trust, and there is professional trust. When I was hired 26 years ago to work for the City of Rochester, NY, I literally had to swear an oath to act honorably in conducting myself as an employee of the City, and if I broke the law as an employee, jail for me big-time.
In fact, I took early retirement due to stress because it turned out the head of my department was part of a “pay-to-play” scandal and spent three years helping our Mayor siphon funds from the City budget to create a “slush” fund for bribing various public and private individuals.
When the head of my department was discovered to be very much part of the scandal, she was offered a choice: early retirement and a chance to keep her pension OR get arrested, go to trial, and go to jail.
I as a low-level worker bee was one of about twenty-five people who were constantly and vaguely threatened with unspecified reprisals if we dared to reveal to anyone outside our office any information that was not approved by my corrupt boss.
We were made to feel that newspaper reporters showing up to review documents (with approval from the Public Relations office of all places) and constant questioning by the Office of Public Integrity were our fault (though the group of people I was part of was one of the most honest, hardworking, long-suffering groups of worker bees I have ever known.
I’ve been retired for about four and a half years now, and it was only recently that I met the whistleblower who forced a mayor, three of five department heads, and four or five supervisors to retire early or find a new job. She was/is the mom of one son and the owner of a small general subcontracting business that wasn’t getting paid on time. Her investigations into why she wasn’t getting paid blew the lid off City Hall, so to speak.
On the level of professional trust and professional responsibility, it continues to make no sense top me that the acknowledged leaders of the Viki community need to ask Viki (actually Discourse) to grant “leader” status to people who are already:
- Respected in the Viki community
- Doing a good job of maintaining order
- Keeping people on topic and on task in discussions
- Reminding people of the need to interact in a productive and encouraging manner
- Asking people to consider taking certain topics in threads and make new threads to avoid confusing people who are new to the community
Maybe because I have only recently become involved in the Community Discussion Board, it sounds as if those recognized as Viki Community leaders already had, before purchase by Rakuten, the ability to perform necessary Discussion Board housekeeping (organizing of information, archiving, combining and deleting of threads, and so on).
What about Viki’s being owned by Rakuten and run by Discourse (at least on the Discussion Board) now makes it mandatory for the recognized leaders of the Viki community to ask to have conferred on them what they have been doing all along?
I did have a fairly simple question just a few days ago about whether or not threads could be deleted. In reviewing exactly what I had originally asked, and in reviewing questions you and others wanted to compile and present to a Viki contact person, it struck me that there was no need for the Viki community to ask for permission to do what is already being done (at least based on what I have been reading).
If anything, Viki as a subsidiary of Rakuten and Discourse as the manager of the Community Discussion Board should be answering questions such as: “When will you be upgrading the app, the infrastructure, the server (the whatever) that allows the Discussion Board to exist SO THAT clearly recognized and responsible Viki leaders can do a better job of managing the Board with less hassle?”
The answer as always is money. Which is where my quote from a young woman’s honors thesis comes in.
Viki wants to maintain the illusion that the Viki community is a fansubber’s paradise, a fun community where everybody’s doing it for love and giggles, because it creates appealing product branding, attracts more potential segmenting/subbing volunteers, and keeps Viki’s costs low, low, low in that area.
Which I am all for. Because I want to be able to watch great Asian dramas for essentially 10.00 USD per month. Because I want to offer Viki viewers the best possible subs. Because I know Viki can’t afford my PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL, careful, sophisticated services.
I know that the salary-earning Viki contact people are not bad guys. They have their issues and stresses and are under more pressure than members of the Viki community. Because if they don’t manage to keep Viki functioning as a very profitable income stream for Rakuten, they could lose their jobs during a tough time for economies all over the world
But after thinking about your question to me, it seemed to me that my original question was pretty irrelevant, and Viki community members needed to ask different kinds of questions.
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I experienced the same thing! Last night.
I subbed till 10pm and they didn’t get updated and today morning I noticed that they got updated around 1 am.
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I really don’t think Discourse is involved in managing anything here. Discourse is the integrated platform Viki(and Soompi) uses to host their comment sections/Discusions/TDs. Discourse people themselves aren’t involved. If you post comments on Soompi, there’s no wait-time for moderation. Only if lots of people flag your comment, it gets taken down.
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The way my mind works, I tend to see Viki’s choice of Discourse as a “framework” for the Community Discussion Board as some kind of . . . necessary abdication of responsibility for overseeing part of its business?
I do keep in mind that there are essentially three parts to the Viki Community that somebody has to be responsible for in order to keep Viki performing as a materialistic income stream for Rakuten. They overlap somewhat but are distinct.
There are ALL the people who watch what Viki streams, whether for free or on a subscription basis. The “discussion” that many Viki fans take part in occurs through the timeline comments. It’s what I think of as the comments people make when they go to a movie theater, watch a movie, and respond to what they see on the screen. But because time-line commenters are not constrained by the social expectations placed on people in a real movie theater, those commenters can end up doing some pretty heavy trolling.
Then there are the paid subscribers who have access to the Community Discussion Board. Discussions about Viki dramas can get pretty wild because there is more opportunity to express ideas and feelings in depth. There is, I think, more opportunity for people to “go off the rails” on the Discussion Board, but there is also much more opportunity for Viki fans to get to know other people and develop relationships of trust and support.
Then there are the volunteers who take the plunge and get involved in segmenting and subbing. And of course because these are highly technical activities requiring extensive training, and because Viki’s financial success rests on the skill of trained volunteers, it is imperative that there be maximum hard work and minimum irrelevant chatter.
But ultimately, whatever subset of Viki fans is under consideration, and whatever the reasons are for those fans to have to interact with Viki’s corporate representatives. I find it sad that a variety of questions get asked about a variety of things, and it takes way too long (n my estimation) for Viki’s real money-makers to get answers. In fact, sometimes it seems as if the simpler the question, the longer the delay in answering.
Discourse has a part to play in this whole process because Viki has chosen Discourse to provide the Discussion Board framework. I assume that, if something goes wonky with the format or content of the Discussion Board, ultimately Viki will defer to Discourse.
Discourse doesn’t have a part to play in time-line comments, reviews, or issues related to training of subbers and segmenters.
I understand that Viki fans, whatever their status or function, are going to have questions about how things work and how they SHOULD work because Rakuten Viki has a much different behind the scenes setup than the “old” Viki. And obviously it is important to have a good working relationship with “Viki corporate” because so much is at stake.
However, since Viki would not have a product to sell without its fans (especially its volunteers), I see Viki fans as having the ability to be just a little more demanding and a little less servile in tone.
I think this is one of those things, again, where my coming out of an individual-oriented cullture, rather than a community-oriented one, has me focusing on things that others might find irrelevant or offensive. Or they just have never thought about them.
I am not very familiar with the social aspects of how Viki works, but I am learning and (I hope) growing in that regard. In terms of the behind-the-scenes and more technical aspects of how Viki conducts daily business, the more I learn, the more I have to wonder why Viki keeps making it hard for Viki fans to support Viki, and why Viki fans aren’t asking more challenging, but still professional and respectful, questions.
It’s my perspective, and it’s not meant to be an offensive one. I am willing to learn. However, since childhood, one of my constant cries about anything in life has been, “But why?”
As an eldest child, another constant comment out of my mouth has been, “Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
I hope the two comments balance each other out eventually.
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