Moderators who hoard channels

I would actually suggest something… revolutionary? I would suggest to limit only the number of unfinished projects for OL Mods where English is completed (“library title”).

Reasons:

  1. any on-air project will at some point become “library title”. By limiting on-air projects people are still allowed to hoard, just in a slower pace. You would completely and instantly stop the hoarding this way.

  2. It would avoid the confusion for CMs when they see the Mod hasn’t finished a project, while the real reason is because the project is incomplete in English for a longer time than expected, as @xylune already mentioned.

Mods need to still be quality control, with or without Editors in their team. Otherwise there is not much point to having a Mod. They need to also contribute with at least 10% to the total number of subs. The 10% is how much I would correct a good (not great) subber in my team if I only contributed by editing (so, without writing any new/ de novo sub).

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You can’t add a number to that. An editor just edits what needs to be edited, whether that is a lot or a little. Such restrictions could only lead to fraud.

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Not only moderators and editors subbers should also be limited in taking up projects, recently some users in my language are taking up too many projects and with their poor quality subbing they can’t even concentrate on one and learn and one particular user is scheduling some projects for June next yr, I don’t why…

Some times I want complain the cm about this user and her quality of subbing, and she spends very less time on Viki per day about 15- 20 minutes maximum and she took around 6 projects ( as of now), and 4 were 16 one hr episode dramas.

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You’re missing a point here. It’s to make Moderators actually contribute to the project. Rather than rely on the editor for everything regarding subtitling. A number can be assigned.

The role of a Moderator who isn’t contributing by subs is superfluous.

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I’m all for moderators contributing and I do think editing is one of their main tasks, but why a specific number? Wouldn’t that make some moderators edit randomly just to reach their “quotum”?

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When I started reading this thread, I was like “Shout it out, guys! Hoarding is a huge problem!”. You see, if I want to be honest with myself and you, I was really pissed off at that time, because another moderator had refused to add me as a subtitler in two consequtives projects saying she had it all planned and didn’t want to correct other people’ s subtitles, even though she found my profile good enough. I need to point out here that my community is a small one and we rarely find people to work on a project, so “moderating” is an overstatement, since we usually translate, edit and “moderate” ourselves. So, I thought it was stupid on her behalf not to accept help and also bad for those waiting for the subs. That particular moderator also had more than 15 projects on her plate at that time.
However, monitoring that moderator (out of spite at that time), I found out that she was working more than 7-8 hours a day on her projects, her subs were very decent and all her on going projects were translated within a day after the OL “green light”. At the same time, she was proceeding in a good pace with all her “library” projects.
So that “Hoarding is a huge problem!” impulse was not true for that person and she now has my admiration and respect, although I don’ t agree on working solo, when quality help is offered. Of course, there other moderators that give meaning to that impulse.
My point in writing this is that I agree with those saying that it is very difficult to define which “hoarding” is bad and which not. Everything we do in life is judged based on results in terms of quantity and quality. I’m a relatively new volunteer, so I don’t know how exactly you can keep a check on the quality and the consistency of each volunteer. I bet that if someone wants to do that, it can be done. But is may require time, money and other resources.
To conclude this long post, “hoarding” shouldn’ t be defined as having to many projects at the same time, in my humble opinion, but as poor performance in terms of quality and consistency due to many projects. Note that I’m a volunteer who never takes more than 3 projects at the same time (on-going or “library”) under any type of role (subtitler, moderator or editor).

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I think if we don’t define a percentage (or a minimum number), one can say one subtitle per project is enough as a contribution.

Yes, abuse is always possible, in any situation. I hope large majority realises that it’s much more beneficial for the project to contribute fairly, with a fresh sub for example. Since the project will be finished faster.

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Your example is wonderful. I agree, this contributor is praiseworthy for her working ethics. However, she is unfortunately also a huge exception.

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What do you guys think of a singular limit for each contributor?

Well, each contributor has a different investment and available time. Sometimes, in some periods, we are more available than other times as well.

What matters is the quality and that the drama is done, fully translated and edited.

It seems “utopian” to think that we can define a “fair” limit. If this request was made, it is above all so that there is no moderator who takes everything, like “hoard channels” without doing them properly.

No, officially. Yes, unofficially.

So, and what if I told you that this question is there because viki does nothing when we are faced with people who take lots of dramas and don’t do them, just take them without progressing in their job role/hoard channels? And that viki is not hearing the alert/reports from contributors?

So, it is possible that this interrogation is also there to moderate this kind of practice.

Okay, today viki seems more inclined to hear warnings and act on them. So there are fewer and fewer hoard channels people… But I think viki still have a lot to hear.

Perhaps it would be interesting to understand the root of the problem instead of acting on the consequences of it.

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You can not really go by what the team credits show.

One thing to mention about moderators is that with all the pre-subbed shows coming in now, is that segmenters also need moderator access so that they can combine - copy the existing subtitles of short segments and paste them into a larger combined segment. Segmenters do not fix grammatical or spelling errors. We leave that to the translators and subbers. The only things we fix in combined segments are the line breaks between speakers and deleting the excess formatting tags; < b r >, < i >, ♫, etc. to make the text fit into the segments.

Also, a thing to note that you may not be aware of is that while segmenters adjust the timing for every single segment, the true amount of work that segmenters do does not show up on the Meet the Team segmenters section.

For example, we just finished segmenting Fall In Love today. It has 36 episodes of about 45 minutes each, Usually 4 parts per episode. There are thousands of segments for this show! However, we only get credit for new segments, the ones we make for the team credits, and the missing lyrics and untranslated signs, so it seems like we aren’t doing much of anything.

segments

Weirdly, we do have subtitle credit even though we have not translated anything. Our subtitle credit was acquired just from combining short, rapid-fire conversations into a larger segment that is easier to read. I combined 914 segments and Sabrina combined 727 segments which show up as the number of subtitles written. (which is a lie.)

subs

Since most of the segments are NOT combined you can get a glimmer of the amount of timing work we really do when our subtitle count is this high. It’s in the thousands but it never shows up.

So, all those moderators you see with little or no subtitle credits may be doing other types of work. Also, reading each and every subtitle to verify them is uncredited WORK. Subtitlers only get credit for subtitles they wrote themselves or fixed. Moderators don’t get credit for reading correct subtitles.

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@lutra Good points, thank you. I’d like to get more clarity if you don’t mind. Anyone else feel free to chime in too.

Do you mean moderators and editors don’t have their respective responsibilities distinguished? For other languages that do have both moderators and editors, German for instance (on some channels), are the roles still unclear or poorly defined? Any thoughts on if the responsibility of each of these roles should be distinguished with minimal overlap?

We acknowledge that we lack in this aspect and we are working to be better and ensure our community feels supported and informed as best as we can. We are continuously learning.

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@irmar This is new! And an interesting perspective. For other languages that are dependent on English availability, how do you envision this to apply?

I’ll take this as-is for now and reach out if/when the team wants to understand this idea in more detail. I’ve made notes.

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I know some teams struggle to get TE, GE, and/or CEs. The pool of English editors we have is really small compared to the wider English team and that I think is part of the problem.

Having a “time rule”, to some, may potentially mean a compromise on the quality, especially for edits. As editors, what do you think?

So a moderator must have [defined minimum] contributions within [defined period of time]? Most but not all moderators get involved with the subtitling itself, and so I wonder if “after OL release” be a good measure.

(For sure, the team did review the distribution of subtitles within a video some time back but it was more for subtitlers instead of moderators.)

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Heads-up that I am taking time to read the responses carefully and in detail. Also doing some digging into team activities at the same time. So If I haven’t replied to you, I probably haven’t gotten there yet and would get there in the next few days!

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[/quote]

Yes, you are right. She is probably an exception. But this example served as food for thought regarding the criteria that should be set in order to secure quantity, which is very much needed due to the rising number of projects, and quality which should always be safeguarded.

Quantity is easy to measure and limit, if you want to, and that’s what rules or guidelines about the number of projects can achieve. But quality and consistency, which I believe is what troubles us all, cannot be achieved by quantity rules. One might have 3 projects and never finish them or do a bad job and other problems that have been mentioned in this thread, while someone else might be like the contributor in my example. What I mean is that the problem is not hoarding itself, but hoarding that leads to bad results. Limitation to the number of projects may be a useful indirect way of taking care of the problem, but it’s not a decisive one, in my opinion.

Another thing we should always keep in mind is that this is a volunteer-based community. That means that volunteers are needed and should not be discouraged by too many rules (I’m guessing that is what viki thinks), but what is actually needed is volunteers with decent contributions, since when the job done is bad, people are displeased and turn their back on what doesn’t satisfy them. And, at the same time, those contributors who try their best get discouraged and might also turn their back.

So, what could be a solution, you will naturally ask. I already mentioned I’m a relatively new contributor, so I’m not aware of many things and problems here on viki, but based on my experience here so far, I will dare to make some suggestions, which depend mainly on the management and staff of viki and less on the contributors/volunteers, who are already offering their time and effort:

  • I get the concept of contribution, but if viki wants to keep its viewers satisfied, there should be some monitoring of the quality of contributions. There should be at least one person responsible for each language available on the platform. It could be a trusted volunteer to whom some kind of extra reward is offered or a paid employee (I have mentioned before that every solution needs time, money and human resources). That/Those person/s (depending on how large the specific language community is) can assess the work of moderators, subtitlers and editors, in terms of quality and consistency, and can also help CMs check moderators they’re recruiting on their projects. I understand that “assessment” is a scary and discouraging word in every field, but this is what everyone is talking about. And when I say quality and consistency assessment, I don’t mean there is a need for professional skills here, but a minimum decency regarding subtitles and some rules regarding consistency.
  • Consistency can be monitored with deadlines. It has already been mentioned in this thread that there should be some deadlines to secure the completion of a project. These deadlines can vary for on-going and “library” projects. I won’t be the one to set the deadlines. When there are deadlines, people will think twice before hoarding projects.
  • And what will happen when the assessment result is bad or against the rules or deadlines aren’t met? Should there be a “punishment” on a volunteer-based community? I believe that if such an assessment exists, the community will be auto-regulated. Moderators won’t recruit bad subtitlers and CMs won’t recruit bad moderators. And if they do and things don’t go well, they can replace them. The only role left to be regulated are CMs, who probably want their projects translated in as many languages as possible and sometimes overlook or – more often – are unable (due to language barriers and lack of information) to check all of their team members.
  • So, the final question is what to do with CMs hoarding channels and leaving projects unfinished, delayed or badly done, since as they say in my country “when the fish smells bad, it probably starts from its head”. Well, CM selection is made by viki staff. So, they should make sure to check CMs thoroughly. Otherwise, we’re discussing in vain. Lately, there have been projects with viki staff appointed as CMs. If that means that the CM applications were assessed and found lacking, that is a good thing. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was able to monitor a fellow moderator and could tell a lot about her work. So, viki staff should be able to do that as well when CMs are being selected.
  • Last, but not least: Extra care should be given to the translation in English, since it’s the translation source of every other language. It is obvious that there is a lack of translators in English. I don’t know how this can be solved (with “contributing” methods), but it definitely would make things better, if there were more Korean-Chinese-Thai etc to English translators.

Wow, this is not a post, this is an essay! I apologize for the extent of this post, as well as for the possibility of being irrelevant (since we are talking about “hoarding”). Just one closing remark: I joined viki contributors’ community, because I was so frustrated with seeing so many projects with bad subtitles in my language. I can watch dramas in English, so why bother, right? Because I love the idea of more people from my country enjoying them as well. But “enjoying” requires good subtitles, not just any subtitles. People might not know a foreign language, but they know their own. It’s better not to be translated at all than being badly translated.

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I’d like to address that drawing from my personal experience as both Moderator and Editor (so this is strictly my point of view!).

Since the editor role has been incorporated to the Subtitled Team system, I fully embraced that! I love being an Editor. I help my experienced seniors as well as Moderators who are new to the job, and I am especially careful when it comes to check the quality of the translation. That’s what I, as an Editor, do - edit, of course, check typos, be mindful of the way sentences have been adapted, look for better ways to express a concept in my language, fix translation erros etc.

As a Moderator, I usually edit alone, but when I have Editors, I feel like I have to be a step ahead of them in fixing some details - I set up the tone of the translation, decide how to render recurrent terms so that the translation gains in coherence, try to go for a certain style based on who is talking and make the translation gain in expressivity (and of course, I fix the Editor’s errors, if there are any). That means that, if I have an Editor in my team, I usually check the episode AFTER my Editor went through it - that’s what I am currently doing in Court Lady with my two Editors. (Of course, as a Moderator I also recruit the team, ensure that everyone translates their part, check comments in the channel, communicate with the English Editors and the rest of the team and whatever else it is needed!).

We can say that in my teams, there is always a TE and a CE - it can be that the Editor is the TE and I (as Mod) am the CE, or viceversa. What matters is that I always define clearly what I’d like my Editor to take care of, or always ask what I am expected to do as an Editor - and it often depends on the project!

That does not mean, of course, that my Editors cannot modify sentences to their liking and have to conform to my style or that they cannot suggest alternative adaptation to the ones I decide - I try to establish a certain degree of communication, as well as ensure that the subtitlers’ translation ends up being modified only when it contains mistakes or does not suit the mood/character/event in the story.

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From my point of view, at the local level (other languages) Viki should not interfere in setting clear assignments when talking about a moderator-editor team. They will determine their own way of working.

I’ll give you my example:

Where I’m just the editor, the moderator notes down the specific translations from the first episode. After that, the moderator will continue to note down only the ones from the part/episode he/she is responsible for translating. For the rest, I as editor make sure that after editing each episode, as well as after translating the part/episode assigned to me, I note the specific translations in the document. Also, if I am in doubt about a specific translation, I ask the moderator, who makes the final decision.

I work in the same way if we are two moderators, with one of us being responsible for editing.

If I moderate alone, it’s even simpler, since I’m also in charge of editing and assign myself this role visibly in the team section. The only role I don’t assign myself when I moderate is that of subtitler. I can’t conceive of a moderator/editor not translating on the same terms as the team, so by default I must also be a subtitler. I have situations when I translate more than the rest of the team. :joy:

So, I think the direction of an edit as well as how it is done depends from team to team. Viki doesn’t have much to interfere with. Of course, in the case of English teams, there might be issues where Viki could step in. I’m only editor for the Romanian language, so I can’t comment on the English team.

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I mean that very often, moderators of OL and editor are one person. As I said, I can’t speak for the English team.

I don’t think so, but as I mentioned, most of the time there is someone with two roles, either moderator/editor or subtitler/editor.
For me, it is a long time since I was active on on-air channels with subbing teams. In my first and second project, there was neither moderator nor editor. When I took up a project as a moderator first there was no one interested in editing, so as moderator you are responsible for good subtitles and should check your subbers work. I remember only one project where I had an editor who did nothing else but editing. So I don’t think the definition is unclear, but in practice doesn’t always fit the circumstances, as I mentioned this is related to OL teams. Most of the time we only went with the 4-eyes-system, 2 (rarely 3 people of the team, sometimes someone outside the team would watch it with the subtitles and give feedback).

No.

So, do I, and hope is a pretty resilient “thing”.
Especially reacting to requests about subbers or segmenters, who do not fit any requirement should happen faster it should be in the interest of everyone Viki, volunteers and last but not least the viewers. Since my early days at Viki I do not understand why Viki often is more “gentle” with the “bad” subtitlers for instance. That one sentence “not to demotivate them” is like a slap in the face sometimes. I had in a team of 8 subbers, 1 or 2 who had less experience with translations, either I would give them smaller parts, since they would need more time, or we agreed on them to at first only translate the easier sentences. Over time there was only one subtitler, who stayed with our team because, yes, if you want to be better qualified you need to increase your knowledge and that means you need to put in more time. And most of them thought it would be easier and less time-consuming. I still don’t like it that some subbers think their quality of subbing doesn’t matter that much since there is an editor, to which I like to say an editor is an editor and not a cleaner, but that is another topic.

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It doesn’t matter. Of course, there are cases where someone is prevented from contributing for a good reason for a short time once in a while, but usually they’re replaced for the time at least if it’s a longer absence. Especially, if they’re responsible for English editing.

Typically, an episode or film is edited 2-3 times (or rarely even 4 times). In the Final Edit, there might be changes that influence the OL translation in a bad way, but the chance isn’t as high anymore. Furthermore, the result of someone finishing an episode within an hour isn’t worse than from the person that takes over 3 days for some reason - however, if it takes me three days I might be less productive.
During the last months as an OL moderator, there has been very few cases where I considered that the release was “too fast”. Once because there wasn’t a TE that lead to weird translations and empty segments, once in a drama with extremely slow releases and bad editing (obviously wrong words used 4 times in a row, but no one noticed; any reports about it resulted in the team being annoyed, so the reports stopped) and once there were tons of post-release changes. Wrong names, obvious typos, forgotten punctuation… in that case I’d honestly recommend investing some more time twice at least before release.
On the contrary, there are dramas where nothing happens for weeks, months, and you’re told “it’s for the quality”. It’s not. If nothing happens, it can’t be a matter of quality. Here, both OL moderators and audiences are left hanging and if there’s a limit for projects, we are as well destined to wait for the editor for a long time in the worst case. In case of TE or GE, they can find additional ones, but that doesn’t necessarily work for a CE. In the past this lead to exhausting debates over many weeks which could’ve been avoided with clear rules and procedures - or CE isn’t considered necessary for further translations in the first place.

Not a moderator, but a team. Of course, it might be reduced to the moderator if they’re working alone on a project or are from a small language community. It doesn’t have to be a week in regard to people who go on vacation (if the project is quite long) or have very different working hours, but I doubt the contribution is helpful if nothing is done for months. It rather prevents others from applying for a project.
Furthermore, I think the “OL release” might be a bit misleading. If an English team releases 4 episodes per week, even a mediocre community may have issues to keep up with it (e.g., German might be able to cover 3 episodes in many cases or 2 in case of less popular dramas per week), so rather a certain minimum in general if there are episodes released.

That’s why people nowadays often check the team before they consider applying. At least in case of dramas that ain’t from Korea. :woman_shrugging:

In regard to Editor vs Moderator I think that a Moderator must be able to edit. They are responsible to determine terms etc within the drama, so they are required to have a very good knowledge in their respective language.

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Nicht zwingend, imo. Der Moderator kann zB super gut im Organisieren, Netzwerken, vielleicht auch noch im Englischen sein. Wenn er dann erkennt und es sich auch eingesteht, dass andere besser Deutsch können, dann lagert er genau die Editorfunktion aus (und umgekehrt).

Edit: Ich selbst finde es zB recht anstrengend, mir die Serie/den Film vor allen Subbern anzusehen und dann beim Edit das Ganze noch einmal durchlaufen zu müssen.

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