Je sais mais je n’ai pas l’autorisation de le faire sur ce doc. Quand j’essaye ça me met un message d’erreur. De toute façon, normalement ça a été fait hier.
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They indeed might now get the impression that they can’t rely 100% on the subbers and must find new solutions. But I don’t think bot is going to be the most prevalent solution here.
i will use it like a logo for the strike if you willing to.
I already said it before - to not edit bot subtitles - i am okay with that, but you need to be united. It doesn’t help if some do others don’t.
You will be hurt - a strike needs a pre-warning - even in real life their is negotiation before and if it doesn’t work out, that is the time to go on strike. You need a person in charge.
You need to write what you want. Is the bot really the only problem?
When you can have the contact to Viki use the opportunity since as you said it isn’t that often that Viki is listening.
P.S. It’s not that I do not know the Viki of today, I didn’t surface only because of this discussion. I do know that people comments are really “owbhfjhs” and Viki rarely steps in and only if you tell them and even then they evaluate the comments first … It’s a lack of information, you would think if Viki is so proud of the community to advertise with it, it should make it more transparent to people, when they do by a pass that subtitles are not included.
It’s about trust - either - they do not trust us, if we will continue to be the big part to subtitle, or they do not trust that a customer would pay for only licensed content, add-free, quality videos.
In the end it is a matter of trust and money, I understand as a businesswoman that a company needs to make profit, but on the other hand I feel like many volunteers were sold in the past and burned by having to deal with “angry/disrespectful” costumers. That should be Vikis priority to deal with costumers is business and should not be in the hands of the volunteers …
I see that as a grave neglect of Viki, the communication, the transparency - the word so often used but not really put in action. Lacking contact with the costumers is the same, if you have so many ways to communicate requests, Help Center, e-mails, twitter, … At least those visible shouldn’t be sorted out, but answered to. Flag-worthy posts in timed-comments and the Help-Center should be able to flag, no need to write up a report, being told “solved” and the “writer” happily messes continuessly with the comments.
What I want to say if you get the opportunity to get Viki “at the table” to talk you should use it wisely.
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Yes, you would need an answer of Viki, but they didn’t give a date, set one.
Information and communication is always critical with Viki - you get soon, shortly, in the next future.
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Viki should bring out an effective - project/volunteer finder - one where people could also bring up vacant position, or positions someone wants to leave. The one existing is a case for the trash bin, I am sorry. If one uses a platform the platform should also give some good tools for organization.
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Piranna, thank a lot. You said all I want to say so well. I’m the french modo of our glamourous time. This project was released on viki last year but in despite our demands and complaints, we have been allowed to translate it only this spring because the CM. The most of the members of the team, after waiting for months, have taken anothers projects and couldn’t translate anymore. But every week, at least one episode was subtitled in french by me and the others translaters, with passion and dedication. I’m hurt. It’s true because it’s unfair.
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The problem is that over all it’s written on Viki’s page - subtitles done by volunteers and even if it is a bot, there are lines of “subtitles done by team xxx”. People will not see a difference, they will just say bad subs and will start commenting …
Our names might not be on it, the problem is they label it as a team’s work. I posted this picture before, done by a bot with a wrong team’s name to boot.
and now this Viki give me a brake will you
Oh no, we didn’t have bot translations! Hopefully, otherwise I would have deleted them because how can we provide fast subtitles in these conditions and feel motivated to correct a bot? People would have fled. I can’t do this to a volunteer, I am also a volunteer, I can’t do this to my “own blood”, regardless of good/bad relationships.
Releasing episodes is for all languages (Spanish, Italian, French languages… all the team).
If I’m CM and tell all teams to stop, it is forcing them into something they might not want to participate in.
I can’t force them to do something they don’t want.
Though I know that the most effective way would be that…
I already have a foot outside the door… I don’t feel I am enough of a representative if I’m going to leave.
People should find representatives who would stay with them until the end.
I did a list already and sent it, because I support French teams who got this bot destroying their efforts, but each one should take this opportunity to send clear ideas and how to solve it.
There are things we might not have thought about.
I think yes, giving a deadline is reasonable. I think we rushed towards this strike because something important broke and we didn’t feel respected or we were informed really badly if it could be called informing.
I feel I’m talking to a wall when I talk to Viki because our needs are not listened to, we want concrete actions and not only robotic answers. And we want to improve the website for the best… in all that, we just feel powerless because we want to change things, but we can’t and Viki can’t or doesn’t do.
I think you could also voice your concerns to anna in a format of a list. If people don’t voice your own concerns, you might feel we didn’t use this opportunity wisely…
Dear friends,
I have made a Google spreadsheet with all the case-examples of the bot (especially cases where it over-wrote existing good subtitles), Viki’s responses, reasons we don’t want the bot and most importantly our suggestions (with the name of the person making each suggestions. You’re welcome to add yours.
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Is it only about the bot?
People raised concerns about other things, I don’t know if we should talk about them, too?
I don’t want to go on strike many times or other people to feel frustrated because we didn’t talk about other things on this.
Other things? There have been many things, such as my June campaign about lifting restrictions etc. But for now I understand it’s about the bot. It will be confusing to have too many pans on the fire.
BTW I have to leave now, I won’t be able to reply for some time.
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The thing I understand is:
- if they implemented this in French, because there were some inactive teams or not enough fast teams:
it raises problems about inactivity (inactive CM/moderators) - about English teams (I don’t want to throw rocks at them. In this process, we are dependent)
- abusive management/moderations: takes a lot but doesn’t help or doesn’t finish
- finding subbers to sub faster: the page Lutra talked about “projects”. Or a page to find subbers.
I see a link, but it might be too much?
I really like that you picked up abandoned projects. When I first came to Viki, I wanted to finish all the gazillion projects not fully translated to Croatian. And then I got a warning message from a moderator on one of the projects why am I trying to take over her project. I should butt out. Tough situation to be in when you’re a newbie.
Anyway, that wasn’t really my point.
Here are examples of actual cases where volunteers have been forced to be absent from the projects there were currently working on:
- Heart attack - person ended up in a hospital and then was partially imobilized for at least a year.
- Death of a spouse - nothing like depression to make you not only not want to do anything, but forget what you were doing in the first place.
No, that is not okay. We agree here.
However, it can also be like this. A drama may have been uploaded and fully translated to English 3 years ago. And then I come in as a Croatian mod and ask to translate it. I ask the current CM, she doesn’t respond. I ask Viki, they appoint me as a mod. Later you come in as a new CM and see that Croatian lies majorly unfinished as a language. Your natural and immediate reaction would be to think I’m irresponsible. As a CM you wouldn’t know when I started the project in Croatian, because that Viki feature on my project contribution page is not showing the beginning of a translation, and very often is not even showing the accurate time of latest contribution.
The problems we’re facing on Viki have several solutions. It’s not a bipolar situation where we have to either initially choose responsible people, or let bot do the rest.
Yes, my point exactly. Viki is focusing too much on the profitable bot, rather than spending some time and money creating an efficient tool for finding volunteers. A simple announcement board for the open positions would’ve sufficed.
Discussions is not a good place for this because new volunteers rarely find their way here (it is too hidden!) and some of the old volunteers are not regulars here because they don’t want to read a gazillion posts about irrelevant stuff to them. They just need a project or they need a volunteer.
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Guys, you’re scaring me. I’m only a humble translator and I don’t know anything above my level. I’ve been translating for years. Before I’ve got here I was a part of a group of translators. We were just a group of random people, there was no company behind us, we didn’t get a salary. But we were able to organize ourselves, create a well-functioning structure and have our work done. And now you’re telling me that we did, what a big company isn’t able to do? I always thought that there are people from Viki staff who oversee the work of CM. They check what is done and what needs to be done. And now you’re telling me it’s not the case? WOW! Seriously, I’m amazed that it’s running wild and didn’t collapse already. Nice way to run your business, Viki!
I have made a post for other problems at Viki, we are always asked to keep Viki a friendly place but Viki needs to give the base for that.
So please make it known where volunteers lose precious time, a lot more of countable contribution could be made if only:
we wouldn’t need to monitor comments, time comments, fake reviews. Waiting on Viki replies.
You know many more inconveniences since you are active.
Name them now:
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I second that.
I’m afraid I see the usual 3 problems of our volunteer community raising their ugly heads again:
- Trying to fill all our grievances with Viki behind a simple message and diluting its power in the process. I suggest we focus and put pressure. If and when we reach negotiations, we can bring more issues to the table, but at first we need a clear “demand”. (You know what, volunteers are the backbone of Viki, I’ll remove the quotes.) We need a clear demand.
- Making a Viki problem our problem. We are all passionate about what we do, but let’s not be more invested about Viki’s customers than Viki itself. Taking it personally does not help. At the end of the day, Rakuten Viki is a company and we are volunteers unrelated to the business model, if we are not prepared to walk away if our demands are not met because we take it too personally, we’ve already lost.
- Turning against our own community. Over and over again I see some of the more “passionate” volunteers, every single time we encounter a problem with Viki and try to squeeze a solution out of them, grab the opportunity to attack other volunteers and turn the whole thing into a civil war. Like clockwork, every time. And of course Viki knows and expects that. If our priority in a time of crisis is to point fingers to our comrades, we are part of the problem.
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Why did you go away and why did you come back today?
(I’m happy you came back!)
Partial self-governing of this community is what is keeping a lot of us here and working efficiently and regularly. And, although it has some downsides, I prefer it this way.
There is not really a systematic Big Brother who monitors all the projects at all times. Too many projects, too little Viki employees.
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So you think I’m lazy who doesn’t care about her channel while you don’t know anything about what has been going on behind the scenes?!
I’m the CM of Sassy Girl for years and only recently it became fully subbed in English. People where thinking I did abonden the channel but really I wasn’t. I was actually trying my best to make it work and when I was about to give up Viki finally did help out.
The things I struggled with:
- Very limited license so 95% off all subbers who could help where blocked out so even though it was fully segged within a few days the subbing would take a while.
- Some abusers came in an copy pasted subs from Dramafever which is against Viki’s guidelines.
- Asked Viki for help many times and all I’ve got was “We will look into it” and that was it. I asked them to send paid subbers but none where send.
And then suddenly earlier this year I got great news. Hurray! After all those years asking Viki for help finally paid off. And now we finally had it all rolling again, English sub is complete, Viki steps in and is troubling the French team again who is working on Sassy Girl.
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