Whoever at Viki picks it up, they will have to clear this, they have to talk it over in their team and let us know what is what …
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Yes, it would be awesome! Thank you all for discussing this!
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I like this, you made me laugh!
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— UPDATE —
The discussion at Viki is on this topic, no final decision, will keep you updated, or we will get to see one from Viki directly.
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I just wanted to let you all know that I have not received any answer yet on this topic. As lutra said, maybe they are still discussing it. I hope so.
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That is the information I got from Viki, so we will need to wait and see. It was no assumption on my side, but a fact, about the time it takes for them - that is something I can’t tell and I didn’t get information on.
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So, hi there, I am sick of having so many post-its around of missing feed-back from Viki, so I am putting them in the open.
You know the game if you want to you can upvote it in the HC with the arrow up button. I think after 3 weeks we can ask how it is going and I no longer see a point to keep one person at Viki busy, when we can sense that the workload might be a bit much at the moment.
So as I said feel free to vote it up or follow, or whatever …
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Added something, we will see if there is some reaction to it …
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I can only imagine how tiring it might be to discuss with tons of people objecting to a decision.
Some people state that there should be more time invested into accepting applications and choosing moderators. On one hand, this might be a good idea, since smaller Moderators may also “discover” the channel within a few days. On the other hand, having less channels doesn’t mean that the result is surely better. I can name a bunch of single moderators that invest muss less than someone with 14 active projects.
Lately, I’ve been accused of choosing staff within 24 hours (so I waited a day before making a decision since I’m not expecting to have time for it during the week).
There were a few accusations in regard to a choice where I only had a single applicant, including:
- The person has too many channels (it’s lots of indeed, but there are no abandoned projects)
- They are translating literally (in fact, this concerns a majority of the translators I met. Furthermore, if you translate in a team, this might concern a bunch of subtitlers)
- They treat their subtitlers badly and don’t moderate well (in fact, this is for fun, so I wouldn’t choose to do subs for a moderator that screws up majorly. And my standards for moderation may differ significantly from the basic standard in other language communities, so is this even any of my business?)
I’m aware that there’s some sort of accusation war within the language community between the major moderators of this language (which btw. all have a lot of projects they attend to). So this makes it difficult in my opinion to trust them since they tend to badmouth each other without any concrete evidence.
I was told that I’m “careless”. I replied that there’s no formal reason to reject them if they don’t violate the formal requirements and don’t leave their projects unattended. If I reject them without a good reason even though I consider it possible to take care of more than 5 channels (something that Viki didn’t clarify either so far as we all know from the previous discussion). However, I’m supposed to offer the audiences certain languages if possible.
I’m aware that I could’ve just set up “special rules”. But as I’ve seen the results of these in other channels, I’m not convinced. Once I was asked to subtitle on my own since I had 4 projects instead of 3, and they chose a Moderator with less projects a week later who didn’t do a good job. Similar story in another case where an inexperienced person was chosen because of the fact they had less than 3 projects. However, they weren’t necessarily in a position to moderate well either. Certainly, this works the other way around as well. Therefore, I’m doubtful in regard to such arguments.
But I’m even more tired of being accused that “I didn’t think about it”. I spent all day and night counting channels, check the progress, check profiles, applications, discuss it with a friend… I have the feeling that some people think that we all just make easy choices. In fact, I’ve also experienced rejection many times when there’re people with fewer projects or even with more projects, but even if I don’t necessarily understand the decision, I don’t accuse the CM or anything. I would only ruin myself, if I reacted like this, in my opinion.
Of course, if I have evidence that someone e.g. steals subs or uses a translator all the time, I wouldn’t hesitate to report it with evidence.
To sum it up, I’d love for these PM people to see the bigger picture. There are people who don’t think about anything, and mentoring isn’t a bad thing in general. But I don’t consider this mentoring, it’s pretending to know it all.
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I went to upvote it but it showed no numbers. Strange…
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Indeed, but as usual maybe a bug, maybe not …
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Hello! I’ve been following this topic for some time and have gone through every point of view. Now, I will express my point of view as well, and hope I don’t offend anyone… especially since I have “many projects”. 
The main problem Viki should solve, is not the number of projects, but who has access to this role. For my community, a limit on the number of projects would be a tragedy. We are extremely few moderators who fully understand this role. Not to mention that we are a very small community with few moderators anyway.
Theoretically, I can also be placed in this category of moderators with many projects. Practically, I think that’s not fair. Why? Because projects are not abandoned (I translate only by deadline and must be respected), are not translated at a poor quality level, I translate side by side with the team - even translating more than the team on some projects, all responsible volunteers are welcomed in the team and I invest all my free time in Viki. I also translate for other responsible moderators. So it can’t be said that I only enjoy being a moderator. At the moment, the number of projects where I’m just a subtitler, is higher than those where I’m a moderator/co-moderator.
Yes, it is a real problem the number of projects, when you have 60 unfinished projects and you keep applying for new projects (real case).
From the position of channel manager, I pay attention to the number of lines per project, if the volunteers in question has a subbing academy badge or if they collaborate with subbing academy coordinators/graduates, if they present their work transparently (luckily Viki gives us this possibility) and many others things. The number of projects is the last aspect that interests me.
As presented in that ticket, more should be taken into account about projects. How many episodes a project has, what is the length of the episodes, what is the release pace to all languages, how many people translate that project into a particular language. Personally, I’m a moderator on several projects where the pace of release for all languages is infernally slow.
Strictly related to the situation of my community, it would be very important that Viki provides us locally with the necessary tools/ways to limit the activity of those who have serious problems with the language they translate into. Unfortunately, they are even elected channel managers, while other responsible volunteers are not considered no matter how many projects they apply to. Why? Because apparently, from what I’ve noticed, Viki prefers volunteers with few projects. Recently I noticed that volunteers who had been inactive for days were elected managers. And they would probably still be inactive if they hadn’t been elected managers. Personally, I was shocked to see that I managed to get my first project as a channel manager, having already a number of projects as a moderator.
In conclusion, I do not want to imply that the number of projects should not be taken into account, but there may be situations when it is less important. And this differs from one community to another. Therefore, this number of projects needs to be better explained, but under no circumstances can it be discussed as an obligation.
I apologize if I deviated a bit from the main topic of the discussion and I hope I haven’t upset anyone. 
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Um, what? Who thinks one should literally translate at all? In fact, you should do the opposite. Did they mean completely and accurately?
Hmm… I’ve mentioned this before. There are individuals who are well-networked and find out about new channels the second that they open. They get the position based on the fact that they are the only applicant within the 24 hours after the CM has been chosen.
Also, there are those who apply to be the CM just so that they could be notified that (another) CM has been chosen, so that they can immediately send the request to be the Mod of their language. This is tactics, nothing to do about it, fine.
But I think we would all agree that none of the two ways one finds out about the channel make this applicant a better candidate. They just applied fast, that’s all.
If a CM has some time to spare before the project starts, before the upload of the first video, it might be beneficial to the project to wait and gather some more applicants. If they don’t have the time, well, so be it, circumstances demanded a quick decision.
Same here! 
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In fact I wrote the opposite of what I meant. I shouldn’t write comments during a Management lecture.
In fact I find out about most channels rather early as well. Simply by checking the New Releases/ Coming Soon section on a regular basis. When I started to moderate channels, I figured out rather early that the ‘good projects’ are often gone immediately if I don’t. Before people started to spend more time on choosing Moderators, this worked out for those who naturally want to do many projects at once.
However, if you wait longer, the outcome isn’t necessarily a better one.
Last time I waited for 3 days I think and there weren’t many applications after 24 hours. I think a majority usually reacts within a certain timeframe, some may only notice the project after release. 
I usually have the “many projects” label as well, even though people may define “many” differently in the first place. The most I had were 7 Mod projects, which isn’t much compared to some others, but it’s a lot if half of the community’s moderators have about 3 projects. I guess, it doesn’t matter that much whether someone has 3 or 4, but once you are over 5 it feels like you have 20 more.
Probably we all agree that numbers are not an indicator that defines determination. I could give examples for moderators with many projects who are doing well and examples for moderators who have 3 projects and neglect their job in my personal opinion. But a CM doesn’t know how the whole moderation thing is organized in the first place. When it took me an hour to do an episode’s precheck to figure out all new terms, formality levels and new characters, I felt like I did a lot. However, I sometimes wonder if this even has any effect on the way you’re judged by someone. Maybe it does, but sometimes I’m doubtful about it. However, we may all agree that this doesn’t really matter to a CM. They only have a profile page, an application and may think “oh, it looks good” or “oh, there’s nothing on it” or “why did you bother sending me two sentences”. However, you can’t judge the quality of translations from it.
One of my past rejections contained a sentence like “I chose XY because they have the least amount of projects, so they commit more time”. Unfortunately, this is rather wishful thinking (though I think it was not a bad choice in the mentioned case). I think it might be more important how involved someone is in the community and what they learned.
So, I’m even more concerned about people who translate alone. Maybe you can indeed state that they “are in theory rather able to guarantee a certain translation level”, but a lot of Single Translators don’t. They do it because they don’t have the courage or feel like it might be too demanding to set up a team. Maybe some feel pressured, maybe some enjoy “freedom” like this. Of course, in some languages it might be the case because there is no community, and you’re unable to trust fellow volunteers (which are good reasons), but in mediocre to large communities there might sometimes be less “convincing” reasons for this decision.
On the other hand, of course, there might be sometimes volunteers that translate too literally or even weirdly to some extent. Especially in demanding or “smaller” projects.
I’m not exactly against having many projects, I never was. However, I can understand that it’s annoying if you have 5 people providing a very similar quality, and then you’re rejected for someone who has 3 times more projects. Just like you may thing “I have many projects, but I do a good job and this person with 1 project doesn’t” (which is understandable) you may as well think “I have no projects, and they chose someone with 20 projects though they are not better in terms of quality”. This is some sort of dilemma I have no good solution for, but it’s the reason for many arguments. Sometimes this assumption in regard to quality might not be true, but they think it’s well-deserved.
What’s truly just? I have no answer to that question after considering all sorts of reasons and arguments provided.
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As usual with things in life, there is no simple quantifiable solution. Because we are dealing with people. And people and their work can’t be summed up in a few numbers (of projects, contributions, etc). Those numbers are just starting guidelines.
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Oopsie! Let me join in too.
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Hi jeslynl!
I am somewhat taken aback, some of us, me included, still have some left questions when Viki “decided” to ghost us here at Discussions.
Now you come back with some simple questions, and we are supposed to jump on them? I am sorry, I will take my time answering.
How about the questions Viki is taking its time to answer? And yes, sorry for going off-topic.
I am at the point, where I don’t want to read “we are on it” anymore, when over the months not even the “we are on it” is mentioned.
So, is this something still in the making? Or did it “fall” from the desk?
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Hey everyone, thanks for raising the discrepancy of the number of permitted channels for moderators across various FAQs. I have caught up on the recent discussions in this thread and I see very valid points being brought up, e.g. a movie vs. web drama vs. 50-ep period drama is vastly different.
The numbers must be calibrated, no doubt. Like some of you have understood, too, there is no magic number, and many factors must be considered prior.
With the official editor role being introduced earlier, the role of both the moderator and editor might have blurred and become unclear. When these are not defined, it would lead to haphazard calibration or uninformed decisions.
There are problems with how the number is being defined today. We need a lot of insights and this thread has been helpful. But I thought I’ll get more perspective from you as an experienced contributor. How do you think a fair limit would look like? With the addition of the editor role, in your opinion, is it expected of a moderator to be involved in edits?
Lastly, I hope to be able to convey that the team is building the community with you, and your input are actively considered. Many of you are frustrated because development or changes are slow to take place, especially on the hoarding problem front. We acknowledge this and want to break the cycle by carrying forward your sentiments to respective stakeholders in the rest of the organization.
We look forward to your constructive input, wherever relevant.
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I think, and that is just my opinion, before Viki is trying to solve this problem on the long run, it would be good to match the two threads at the Help Center, even if for now it would mean to take the higher number at least this controversy would be off the table for the time being until Viki finally agrees on a fixed number for good.
I think this problem is different, if it is about the English editing or the other language editing. I can’t say how it is with En editors at the moment, but many other language moderators do not have editors, they are pretty rare, the editing is in the responsibility of the moderator, but I do not think the moderator will “switch hats” and add the editor’s role to themselves even if editing is done by her/him.
Well, well … Maybe the younger ones, or the ones new to Viki, however if you have been with Viki for a while, the frustration does not come about the pace of development, or not all, but the up and downs in communication. One time there is even video communication and then there is almost zero communication. It’s that inconsistent approach that is most demotivating to keep giving any feed back sometimes.
I might repeat myself years ago there was a planning map for volunteer issues, where you could look up if the problem was registered, if it was planned to be taken care of, when it was actively in the making and when it was solved. That was by far the best instrument in my opinion Viki ever had done, sometimes they even added when they needed feedback of users of special devices and yes, we gave a helping hand. This schedule table, or however I should call it, did one thing fairly well, it reduced the number of incoming requests and brought the right people together, if you could come up with something like that and it would become known and a reliable instrument, how great could this be, instead of copy and paste replies to numerous tickets or none at all to volunteers and keep them hanging on.
Especially this problem with the number of positions for moderators goes on for months, and we already have been told it is forwarded and in discussion … No, I won’t jump into this rabbit hole, I will just hope we will finally see the light of day.
P.S. There was a 2nd point we were asking about, it might not be a big thing to Viki organization, but still there was the silent change from Viki Volunteer Community to Viki Contributor Community. We won’t get a statement on that, or will we?
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Expected hours of content in a given week could be a way.
For instance, you have right now a film (roughly 2 hours), a web drama (1/2 hour X 2 =1 hour), three normal Korean ones (2 hours per week each = 6 hours) and a long Chinese one (1,5 hours).
But that’s not to easy to implement, because there should be someone monitoring and doing the math.
If all of us worked on all sorts of content, it would be easy to even out. Give or take. But there are some of us who only like Chinese long dramas and others who never touch them.
What is sure in my opinion is that so-callled “library titles” should also be included. If you don’t count them, people will never get to finishing them.
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