I will try to get some info. The weekend is still 2 days away, so maybe we are in luck … We will see, as for in the next hours, do not wait for an answer. I am off, almost midnight.
See you tomorrow.
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In my opinion, “should not” ain’t “mustn’t”. However, it’s hilarious that there are different statements even within the guidelines. Generally speaking, I’d go for the newer one which would be the limitation to 4 on air + 5 library channels.
The rules state as well that subtitlers should not work on more than 5 channels. I don’t know about other languages, but nobody would ever think about that in regard to German., We’re happy to even find enough people for 2 episodes a week.
Technically, Viki guidelines recommend the “Editor” role as well to TE and GE. However, there are no limits assigned here, though it’s usually English editors that are in a position to delay everything.
I don’t think that Viki really cares much about the rules, considering they select Channel Managers that obviously don’t follow these. At the same time, there are English Editors that release one episode per month of an on-air project. Isn’t that more of an offense compared to an active language mod with 6 channels?
Well, technically it would be 5 projects as subtitler, 9 as moderator (4 on air, 5 library), 4 as segmenter, an unlimited amount as English Editor without Moderator rights and 4 as Channel Manager.
Considering that in some teams, there are so many subtitlers that you hardly do anything (or the release for OL is extremely slow) this limit is just as ridiculous and I don’t know any people that discuss the amount of projects someone subs.
However, it’s not a secret that some newly appointed CMs have 10+ unfinished projects (some work on them, some don’t) - and in the end Viki relies especially on segmenters and English teams to finish their projects. So they wouldn’t exactly benefit from taking actions against successful editors or moderators. Most competition can instead be found between OL moderators, especially if there are many people available for languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. That’s mainly a discussion about fairness, and not about anyone being unable to cope with more than 5 projects. Even languages with a neither small nor big community compete about projects. Especially interesting ones.
My main point would be whether they’re able to finish a project in time in good quality. Still, I can understand very well that it’s annoying to be not considered though someone else might not provide a better result at all - they were just lucky or are better known in the community. Therefore, I support the idea that everyone is rather moderate about the amount of projects they’re in charge of.
The question would be who has to face consequences. The CE, who releases at most one episode of an on air project per month (is there even a rule about being slow)? The OL moderator accepting 6 projects? The CM who delays releases by 2 weeks just because they want to announce the finished FE personally? The person who is bad at subtitling?
No one because it’s written as “recommendations” only? On the other hand, there’s stated that offenders should be reported if they “fail to follow” the guidelines. So basically you can keep reporting people for having too many channels to subtitle, which would result in dramas not being subtitled or with a huge delay for no good reason.
However, I think that lots of people rather won’t report something since they fear the consequences or are afraid to destroy the atmosphere.
That’s another problem indeed. Or short dramas with 1 release per month. I’m so overworked that I rather fear to lose my team because they are lost interest. In my opinion, there should be some ideas for those ungrateful history dramas and guidelines in regard to time limits within projects are supposed to be finished/released. Of course, something unexpected may happen, but that only may concern very few cases of projects that are being dragged on. At the same time, it has to be considered that solo subbers are usually slower (which doesn’t prevent them from being responsible for not accepting too many projects at once) - as I’m aware that some CMs try to establish such rules themselves.
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No, it’s even funnier XD There is an information, that normal QC can have only 3 on-air projects
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Thank you @lutra!
If you compare the 2 guidelines (now you should be able to see both links and the context in which the guidelines are written), don’t they say different things? I am objecting to neither.
Let me point out one more thing: one guideline (the rule of 5) is written by Sean, a Community Manager. Not sure if this is even relevant…
My community is telling me/us that we can only have 5 Mods “according to Viki’s policy” (fine by me, if that’s THE rule). However, if I look around (for all languages), reality does not always support the “rule of 5”. Ergo… We are interpreting the guidelines in different ways, I suppose. The rule of 5+4 you posted here would explain why some Mods have up to 9/10 projects. I sent an email to Viki for clarification. I hope they will not be vague in their answer! LOL
P.S. This is not an accusation to any Mod with more than 5 projects!
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If Viki were that set on this rule, about a third of the currently active volunteers would be banned 
I don’t know who told you that, but from what I’ve seen over the years that doesn’t sounds plausible one single bit.
The users where Viki had to intervene (and I know this for certain, it’s not a hearsay) are those who have had over 100 unfinished projects and a lot of them not even started. Those are true hoarders.
Viki’s official community leaders choose very carefully which issue to tackle and how they tackle it. They have not banned any hoarders so far, but they are limiting them from becoming CMs. You are only banned if you explicitly go against Community guidelines (no insults, name-calling etc). Like that dude who recently came to Discussions and started telling people they were fat-fingerers for having uncorrected typos. Viki doesn’t even ban Evil Googlators, for god’s sake!
If there is a misguided soul who will report another user for having 6 instead of 5 library projects, Viki will know how to deal with the report. Mostly just ignore it. Reason? The rule hasn’t been put into force just yet (even though it has been standing there for a year, many are unaware of it). And when it does, it will probably not be a firm rule as you might wish, but a guidance for new CMs how to choose their Moderators.
Even if the rules were 100% clear and matching on all the different pages, they still couldn’t be completely put into action because of many things.
Viki should have only one person update these rules, and update them on all pages defining the rules of volunteer contribution. Not just one at a time.
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I hear you! I am glad to hear that. Thanks
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The problem is this sentence fromhere:
Gold QC Contributors should not work on more than 5 on-air Channels at the same time as a Moderator, regardless of the show being considered on-air or library.
“not more than 5 on-air” = then if it’s not on-air it’s okay?
But in the next line
“regardless of the show being considered on-air or library” = So not only on air, but library are included?
As you see, two different concepts in the same sentence. Is this not confusing to you?
Then, this goes against their other sentencehere
Act as a Moderator on no more than 4 on-air Channels & 5 library titles at the same time.
I think there may be a rule which was updated/changed at some point, but they forgot to update it everywhere. But which one is the latest? 5 all included or 5+4?
In short, I’d like someone from staff to
- Give us a clear official answer and
- Re-write those sentences to be clear and understandable. We are a bunch of educated, mature people, and we cannot make head or tails of their writing it sounds like a prophecy of the Pythia at Delphi, made to be cryptic on purpose.
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Irmar you do not need to call out for jeslynl here, Discussion is not on the priority list, if you have not realized it. There are already 2 inquiries at work, so we will see where the answer comes first.
I didn’t know about the QC status guidelines, so there was my problem of understand, but I got the link and then saw, what everyone was actually talking about. Yes, there needs to be some clarification, hopefully it will not take up too much time.
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I do not know who jeslyn is and I suppose he/she/it/they is an admin here (?). Yes, let’s ask them all! It would be great to have confirmation from as many as possible and figure out THE rule, finally! Why not? LOL
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She is from the Viki staff
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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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