It’s mainly the first thing. We don’t get notification in our inbox. And, especially when a project is already finished, or if the team is already closed, sometimes we forget to click on “team closed”.
Otherwise, those of us who have a project coming soon or ongoing, certainly read our messages every day (and more than once a day).
The trick is to write personally, to the moderator’s inbox. And then, yes, write a nice letter as you used to do, it’s always the best way. Don’t assume bad will.
To be clear, if I assumed bad will every time I apply for a show, I wouldn’t bother to apply at all. I just realised that spending half an hour on a nice letter with half of it in a language they don’t understand anyway is just a waste of my/their time. If I say that I love the (premise of the) show, I’m mostly in the top 15, do 1-2 episodes a day and have experience with historical as well as modern shows, it has proven to be enough. If they don’t read it/aren’t interested, then it doesn’t matter anyway, and if they are, my experience is that they will have a look at my “About” page.
I am still a rookie compared to those who have been here for years, but I have worked on older shows as well as on air shows, and while the reasons why the CMs/mods don’t reply/reply too late differ, the result is the same. They lose a chance to add someone to their team and maybe even discourage people from trying to apply ever again. There are plenty of shows available in under 5 languages while others are in 15+, sometimes in languages I haven’t even heard from. What could be the reason?
There’s an apply-system that doesn’t actually work, there are some people who are too busy/unavailable/uninterested, there is no one to check if a closed team is really closed, Viki let’s a single person to be in charge of everything instead of making co-CMs a standard in order to divide the load, and Viki lets people with many roles on many channels to get new channels anyway, instead of bringing in more motivated people who would have the time for this role.
So in my opinion, while I’d certainly recommend everyone to write a nice application and put a lot of effort in it, I also feel like there is so much more that needs to get fixed.
About the closed team. Closing a team requires a bit of effort, you have to go to the proper page and do it, therefore it’s much more common that a team that looks open will be closed, rather than the opposite. Why would someone want to mark a team as closed when they still need contributors?
Viki lets a single person do anything in a project because (in my opinion) co-managing sucks and is a VERY BAD IDEA.
Of course, I know people who do it successfully, I also know people who hate it but still apply in pairs thinking that this will give them more chances to get a moderation. Many times it results in disagreements and bad blood. I personally would never accept to co-moderate with anyone. If I don’t have the time to do it on my own I don’t apply for moderation.
There may be many subtitlers and editors, but there must be one person who puts their own “signature”, so to speak, and takes the final responsibility for the project: the praise but also the blame if something is not well done.
About the many channels… When I fist joined Viki, in 1916, there were people with 20-30 moderations. Now each person can only have five. I find it’s a wonderful improvement. I am usually critical of many things Viki implements, but this was one of the very good ones.
Everyone wants to be in popular projects (and there can be many reasons why some shows are not popular), in recent projects, in shorter projects. Few people commit to 50-episode dramas, old dramas, or dramas without popular stars. Because if they aren’t good they would get bored to watch them while working on them, if they are long and are not good it would feel like a chore, and because their hard work on older dramas would be seen by fewer people, as most of them have already watched it, even if only in English.
For instance I have been desperately looking for a TE for one of the very best sageuks of all time, and they all refused - they probably prefer to work on recent or on-air projects.
There may be other reasons I cannot think of.
My bad about the unclarity about the “closed team”, what I meant was, if it is decided that a team will be closed, there is no one who’d make sure that the closing was actually done.
From the way you reply, you seem like someone who takes their CM-job seriously and does it well. You come over as dedicated, welcoming and open. Even though I understand your antipathy against sharing a channel, I wished people like you would help others to become a CM by guiding them as their co-CM. They might learn a lot from your experience and guidance.
Oh, co-CM is a different pair of sleeves. I have nothing against that, because there’s a lot of tedious work to be done before and after the project’s run. For instance checking the profiles of moderators to ensure they are diligent and finish their projects. And after the end keeping track of the percentages of various languages, and send messages to those who “forget” to finish.
I would gladly share those jobs with some kind soul.
Back when Viki was still in black-and-white? 
Oops! I just revealed my age, LOL!