It is really unfortunate that I have to create this topic, but for a while now I have seen an increase in channel hoarding. The problem is more prevalent in the Viki Arabic community. I want to blame the Arabic channel hoarders only, but CMs are at fault too. I know a lot of channel hoarders that have 10+ dramas that they have not finished subbing and are still taking new airing dramas. Why are CMs still adding them? If they have 2-4 dramas that are still work-in-progress, it is okay, but 10+ drama that are not finished for month/years?
The problem:
CMs added a volunteer who never contributed as mod. I blame CMs for this since new users have no idea about Vikiâs volunteer guidelines: they should have at least contribute 3000 subtitles before becoming mods.
Donât have time or donât know how moderating works. As soon as they pass 3000 subtitles, they start volunteering as mods in a lot of channel all at once, never realize how hard it is to recruit a team and edit subs. And when it gets tough and they canât find enough subbers, most of them stop subbing or rarely contribute and enjoy the Viki pass they got and comeback 6 months later to get their 500 subs (if you want to do that, do it if you are not a mod). All the while, leaving the channels they hoarded untranslated. My solution is that, CMs need to give the new mods only 1 channel that is preferably a movie or a short drama to test their moderating ability and editing skills. However, they need to add another known, good co-mod that doesnât not interfere in the recruiting and editing, and only gives the new mod input about editing and teach them about moderating. If the new mod disappears, the mentor co-mod can take over.
Refusing co-mods or help. I have seen this a lot. I know that one of the best Arabic mod (letâs call them âAâ) was getting messages from fans asking for Arabic subs on a Chinese drama. However, that channel had another Arabic mod (letâs call them âBâ) that did not start subbing for a long time. âBâ was the Arabic mod for 27 channel , with most of the subs stopping in the first 2-3 episode or never started at all. Also, there are 9 channel that they are the Arabic mod on but have 0 contribution and many more only have their trailers subbed but not the episodes. So, âAâ sent a message to âBâ offering help and telling them that fans want subs. âBâ refuses but never start working on the subs. âAâ contacts the CM and she is added after the CM observed "Bâ's inactively for two weeks. âAâ gathered a team and they have caught up to the English subs, which is phenomenal since the English subs were far ahead and the drama is long. If the drama was left to âBâ, it would have never been finished.
Moderating more than 4 airing dramas. A lot of volunteers donât know that they should not moderate on more than 4 airing dramas per Vikiâs volunteer guidelines. CMs should not add them if they see they have already a lot of airing dramas. I pretty certain they would not even have time for all of those dramas.
Iâm not saying this with an ulterior motive because Iâm interest in the channels that those users take. I busy enough with channels I have and real life (planning a wedding). But Iâm saying this because that behavior is not good, since other moderators, who are fast and better at translating, might want to help out but those users are hoarding, not finishing or not starting the work on the channels they have, and refusing to allow co-moderators to help out.
What a coincidence! Iâve just sent a message on various Channel Managers about a hoarder mod who has dozens of very popular dramas, old, new and on-air, which s/he hasnât even touched, not even formed a team for. I know a Vietnamese hoarder, a Chinese one, a Greek hoarder and an Italian hoarder.
But I suppose that everyone will know some in their own language.
So, if this may be of any consolation, this plague is not only in the Arabic community.
This is a very timely topic! I too am aware of channel hoarders who do not accept the idea that volunteering to be a moderator is a commitment to produce subtitles. Moderator is not an honorary title.
There is one person who is a moderator for the most widely used language who is the moderator for over 100 (!!!) channels for which she has done 20 or less subs titles (for about 80 channels of them â 0 subs) and if you look at the channels for which there are 0 subs by her there are no Chinese subs. A moderator should be recruiting and supervising the language team but there are neither other subbers to supervise nor any subs to quality check!
There is another language moderator who has been the moderator on more than 300 channels-- most of which have 1 or 2 episodes subbed and no other episodes. She is on 90% of all K dramas.
Sure, I myself am listed as a moderator on several channels for which I have zero contributions. There may be one or two channels in which the CM gave me mod status so that I could look into a technical problem the CM was having but all the rest of the non-contribution channels for me are fan channels for which no episodes uploaded at viki or one or two upcoming licensed channels.
I agree with cherrypie that channel managers who appoint these moderators are also at fault. But the primary fault is the channel hoarder.
Ha ha, if theyâre not going to actually work on them, why would they care whether they can access them or not? They just take the title and then donât do anything. Simple, right?
Weâre not even talking of those who do low quality work. There are many who just DONâT EVEN TOUCH those dramas. They donât even form a team. They have zero subs in their language. For DOZENS of dramas. And they keep taking more and more, the popular ones. The CMs donât check. Viki doesnât care.
Now the question is: shouldnât we be reporting those people to some of the CMs of their dramas, to alert the CMs of the situation?
A CM can see if there are any subs but how should a CM check the subtitleâs and editing quality?
I assume that CMs are able to communicate in English and their native language but not in the amount of other languages that are done by several language teams.
When I read your posts it doesnât look like a problem for new mods only. It looks like a general issue among the volunteer community.
VIKI could implement some kind of info tool* for each volunteer that says on how many dramas someone is already working so the CM would see that immediately.
About the editing aspect⊠besides English subtitles there are many dramas that arenât edited yet. Even many months after a drama was completely subbed. As a result of that, many (or maybe most) who are capable of watching dramas with English subs stick to that language instead of their native language because it is just unbearable to watch it in oneâs own language.
Maybe there are more English editors than editors for other languages but maybe it depends also on the approach of other languages teams; that they think âbetter more fully subbed dramas in language X than more edited dramasâ, especially when it is like you wrote that the language mod should do the editing (which will need ages when someone has 20, 30 or more dramas).
*within the community of PVP games it is common that either the developer or some players create tools that offer the necessary information for building teams/inviting team members. In the PVP field it means, that there are statistics about win/loss rate, most played class/es and rating.
For VIKI it would mean showing the amount of subtitles/segments plus the amount of old and recent dramas, including on air dramas and team role/s. The information is already in the profiles just not very easy and clear to see with a quick look. Probably some CMs donât have the time or the will to check ~12 profiles or more plus scrolling through the infos plus checking if a drama is on air or not etc.
Very true. Thatâs why we all make inevitably private lists, little by little, with notes on each person, how was the collaboration etc. It takes time, though.
However I donât make a difference between on-air and not. Firstly, we all know more or less which dramas are on-air. There are not that many at any given time. But most importantly, if the person has more than 40 dramas never touched, with zero contributions and no team, is it less bad if they are old ones?
Each one of us will have 6-7 dramas with 0 contributions, because as cgwm808 rightly said, they may be dramas which didnât get a license, or where we did a specific job. There are other cases. For instance, there was a drama where they added me without me really wanting to work on it. Since then (itâs long finished) Iâve been begging the CM to take me out but sheâs not doing it!!! There was another (Strong Woman So and So) where I was âTimed Comments Moderatorâ. I didnât do anything else there, but delete the offensive timed comments. So, zero contributions. Again, Iâve been begging the CM to remove me but she wonât do it!
So for each person, one can allow up to 10 dramas never touched, because they might be in one of those categories. But 30-40? No way this isnât fishy.
As a CM I always plan to check on the mods of my team.When I see they are inactive for weeks then I usually send a PM and if they donât respond in 2 days I kick them out. But sometimes I do forget the checks. Today I kicked a moderator out of the team of one of my projects. This person had many mod projects with zero contributions and I wonât add her as a mod on my channel again untill she finishes most of those zero contribution projects. I donât like it that people only like to be mods for show, I rather give that position to someone who really wants to work on it.
And yes sometimes it happens that you are given a mod position for an other purpose but that doesnât happen to the hoarders of course.
The problem is not that a person has 0 contributions on a particular channel. If you are a mod and the language you are responsible for has most/all of the episodes subbed, no one will say anything. I certainly would assume you have the role of managing timed comments. All that matters is the presence of subs.
The real problem is being the sole mod on many channels and never recruit a team or work on the channels. Other languages mods are usually added to help organize a team, edit, and sub. Having 0 contributions is not the problem. If they have 0 contributions but the language they are moderating has 100% subs, I would assume subbers and other editors worked on it, and the mod was only responsible for recruiting, organizing the team, and overseeing the subbers.
The problem Iâm talking about is being the only mod and your channels have 0% subs after months or years. Whether you participate in subbing doesnât concern me, if the subs are being produced by the subbers you recruited.
Youâre right, Iâve written from the perspective of a mod who always edits and also fills in the subs if the subbers donât come soon enough or someone is sick or whatever. But of course there are some mods who also get an editor to do all this.
However, zero contributions (really zero, not even writing the credits at the end?) is just something that draws your eye. Then of course you also have to check the show itself and see whether the language is done.
In the case of most moderators I checked, they did have some dramas where they had done more than one or two thousand subs. This means that they are a âhands-onâ mod when they choose to work on something.
The next thing is to check for subs on episodes 1 and 2. And the ultimate proof is when there isnât a team either. Was the person planning to sub this huge long drama all alone? One drama, two, three, maybe. But dozens? No way, it would take years.
But the existence of a team is impossible to check if youâre not a mod in that drama, because of course you cannot access the âManageâ page and see whether there are subbers for that language or not. In my case, it so happened that I had worked as English or Italian mod on four or five of the dramas of the mod I was checking, so I was able to go inside and see with my own eye, with CTRL+F, that there wasnât a single subber in that language.
So yeah, all in all, thatâs a lot of work for a Channel Manager, unless the Channel Manager manages one drama at a time. Which opens yet another can of worms, the hoarder Channel Managers. Viki wonât give them more than 3-4 on-air, but so-called âlibrary titlesâ donât count, they can have as many as they want!
In Greek there is a saying, âthe fish starts smelling from the headâ.
Thatâs true. I only check the subbing process as a CM. If thatâs still zero after a few weeks I send a PM to ask how things are going. If I donât get a response and I see no subbers listed in that language either I kick them out.
To my understanding Viki manages channels per content owner request. They usually come presegged &subbed. Viki has an automatic segging tool, they have paid subbers, can buy the subs from the content owner (maybe included with the license?) and I believe they have an automatic subbing tool too.
I have one channel that came presubbed & segged years ago. We where not allowed to touch the subs but we where allowed to edit the segmenting if the timing was off. So the only thing left for me was recruiting other language teams. Those channels are no fun to manage so Iâm glad Viki manages those most of the time now.
No, not at all. Iâm not talking of the shows where Viki or Viki staff are CM and/or have ready-made subtitles. Iâm not even talking of the English language.
Iâm talking about Other Language moderators who are not Viki staff and have dozens of projects unfinished, many of them completely untouched.
First you see that these projects have zero contributions on the moderatorâs own project page but that is not proof enough: this could mean the subbers in the team did the translation and the moderator just didnât edit - in some cases because there was another editor. This on its own does not prove anything. But if you go and check the episodes (usually checking the first 1 or 2 is enough) there are 0% subs in that language. In most cases there is not even a team. In short: the job hasnât been done. For months, years.
There is a Serbian mod, recent hoarder, long-time contributor, who I feel has the mod position for every single new drama in the last two months. I call her the Queen of the First Episodes because she only translates the first episode and that is probably just to placate the CMs.
Volunteers donât fall from the trees and itâs not easy to be the moderator of a smaller language on Viki. You have to be prepared to do most of the translating. And I donât think itâs just a matter of ignorance. These people are after some sort of glory, blocking the road for other volunteers who mightâve actually done a good job in their stead.
CMs should perhaps âclean the houseâ and give ultimatums to those they think will never finish the job. So that the actual potential contributors can again apply for those positions.
Yes. If Viki doesnât want to limit the number of projects for moderators, this is the only way: CMs taking it into their hands. Itâs a tedious and difficult job, but unfortunately we have no other tools.
In an ideal situation, there would be some way to immediately see on a personâs project page, for each project:
number of episodes complete in that language (letâs take 96% as complete, because sometimes the English is not more than that) and
date last worked on the project (yes, I know, sometimes moderators donât personally work on it, they have someone else to do the editing. But still itâs good to have it).
And, as I have already asked in my Suggestions for a Better Viki document, there should way a way to sort and filter the projects on the project page: by last modified, by title, by date last accessed.
Would you mind and analyze my âstatusâ as a moderator? https://www.viki.com/users/lutra/contributions?filter=role&page=1
I am curious and I have to admit that I let Viki delete 2 moderators positions I had on older Korean dramas and cancelled my moderation positions at 2 Japanese dramas ( no on air shows either). I wonât state my reasons for doing so yet. You are free to guess, if there is someone who wants to know more I will explain to them.
Thank you^^
Now sure about what you want us to check/analyze there.
But⊠I just saw that you are German mod on my channel âThe Last Time I saw Parisâ since years ago and German has only 2% subtitles (first 4 minutes of the film). And no German subbers in the team.
Hey!
@irmar To the last time I Saw Paris - LOL I have an alibi, I think it was last year (not to sure about that) when I was looking for a movie to translate. Yes, no team because this âlittleâ amount I can do myself. And old movies are not that popular. I had some good memories about the movie, so I wanted to do it. I started, and as I am not in the comfortable position to plan the time I can contribute, too often I am interrupted, like back then, yes a little amount was done, but if I do a project sometimes I use minutes to contribute (Many a little makes a mickle.). So, from one weekend to the next I think the channel went to famous room â404â.
I think, I even wrote to you and you were as informed as me (should I say as usual at Viki).
Well, about the topic here, I just wanted to know if it looks like I am hoarding, and if it does, why so?
@irmar about âParisâ
There is no channel for me at all. I would resume it probably, if my time permits it. But I rarely saw any channel that was gone coming back. For those that came back, most of them didnât get a European license so no license, no access.
About the topic, I actually got called a hoarder, someone who wouldnât finish her projects, not forming teams, because I am probably not team-minded. People not knowing, didnât ask about the so called unfinished jobs, they just assumed it by reading my contribution. I have been so many years at Viki and a quarter of my subtitle contribution doesnât even show, because the channels are gone.
All in all, I was curious, when people here are calling someone a hoarder, what are the âqualificationsâ? ( )
I hope I donât qualify as a âhoarderâ or a âhogâ because I have worked on over 200 Kdramas. But except for one channel which was licensed only for Europe, where we have few volunteers for Korean to English, I have a 100% completion rate for subbing in English â every episode at least at 95% reasonably soon after uploading. And that one channel which isnât subbed in English is soon going to be licensed in the US so I have already recruited subbers for it.
I often do work with the same people in several other languages who have the same completion rate as I do --100%. These other mods competently handle multiple channels simultaneously because there are lots of subbers working with them.
What I call hoarders are the people who take on roles as moderators but their language on all or nearly all but one or two episodes has zero subtitles. These people have all of these channels as empty trophies. They canât ever complete the channels they already have because every time there is a new channel, they are named as their language moderator on the new channel but they never recruit anyone to sub.
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