As many of you who work on current K drama may know, after over a decade of volunteers being the principal subbers of current K drama, viki staff in the past year or so have decided that current K drama must be subbed rapidly at all costs so that while volunteers are still actively subbing recently uploaded episodes, on the day of the upload, the paid subbers at a time determined solely by viki community support without consultation with the volunteers, the paid subbers start to sub.
I try my best to create the habit in new subbers of posting where and when someone is subbing and I try to keep that habit for myself.
Today I posted that I was working in 11.3 of Sh**tting Stars. I worked slowly but steadily and took no lenghthy breaks to eat or even to go to the bathroom. Despite my steady production of subs a paid subber ignored my post and my presence in the part and started overwriting my subtitles. CLARIFICATION: By "overwriteâ I mean literally that â she over wrote my subs. She was not attempting to edit my subtitles, she was oblivious of them and didnât follow a simple rule that each language team follows of not subbing in the same part when someone else is actively subbing.
This shows at 4:17 my time, I wrote a sub.
This shows at 4:27 I wrote the next sub and at 4:29 two minutes later I was overwritten by the paid subber. There is a two minute lapse between my sub and her sub.
Hereâs the next sub â she overwrote me five seconds later.
I continued to sub until the part was finished. At no time was I aware the paid subber had entered the part I was working in until I was finished because I had no obligation to check to see if someone had invaded the part. I traced her activity afterwards. At some point she stopped overwriting me because she is a faster subber than I am, so I was, in theory, over writing her subs.
After discovery, I tried to post what happened in Team Discussion but viki âmoderatedâ my post and did not allow it to be posted â it has disappeared
I was going to write a pm to the paid subber whom I have tried to work cooperatively with for years. But then I thought I would just get another meaningless apology and the same thing will happen again as she has a deadline to meet of 100% at a tme which hasnât been shared with us volunteers. The 100% deadline is met by guessing at not yet published OST lyrics, not bothering to look up flashback dialogue to maintain consistency or in Romanizing all sorts of Korean words and phrases rather than researching the meaning in a dictionary or encyclopedia: âJicho Wiwangâ âdosaengâ âjibuâ âdojejoâ âboncho gongmakâ âbongsaâ all left for all the viewers to puzzle over (some of the examples from just one episode of Joseon Fugitive).
Despite this reliance on paid subbers, viki continues to promote its uniqueness internationally in having âcrowd-sourcedâ âfan-poweredâ subs. This is not the viki PR department speaking but the Chief Operating Officer for viki.
I hope those of you who are volunteer subbers at viki have an opportunity to read this. I believe that this post will disappear very rapidly! Anyone care to guess how long this thread will exist?
This is preposterous!
And not only sheâs overwriting another team member, sheâs overwriting the Chief Editor. I mean, come on! Only the TE is entitled to do that.
Okay, looks like that staff member has been here since almost 10 years. Judging by her badges and project contributions page (subbing as an Eng subber in early years but recently subbing without being added), it seems she was first a volunteer and then became a staff member. She must know the rules â know that subtitle editor does not even work in real-time.
Viki letâs the volunteers make channel specific rules and then override those rules themselves.
Thatâs bad, really bad on their part. Itâs also disrespectful to the volunteersâ work.
This is so demotivating! Especially since for the last example you showed, there isnât really a difference in subtitles to warrant a change! I think even an editor wouldnât have changed your original subtitle there.
Is it really that difficult for Viki-employees to follow the channelâs rules? And honestly Iâm really not that impressed by the paid subbers. Have been translating from subbers paid by Viki from English to Dutch and it was a mess⊠Wrong translations, sentences that have been broken off in the most unnecessary or illogical places, etc.
So paid Viki subbers, please donât touch the subs of volunteers. Most of the time youâre not making them any better.
They treat volunteers like this and at the same time ask us for press interviews for Viki? Press interviews with people who are treated as if theyâre not good or important enough. Do they really expect positive answers?
(I donât expect to be chosen as what I was able to talk about was âthe mismanagement of and disrespect to Viki volunteers by Viki.â )
I donât even know what to say about this.
I donât understand why that subber would do that, when you had clearly stated that you were working on that part.
I would be very pissed if I were you and I am glad you made this thread to let people know.
Itâs really sad⊠Ignoring and overwriting without consent is really too much!!! Volunteers also put in same amount of their time and efforts, and really work hard in ensuring the best quality of subs. Disrespecting fellow members will not lead to any positive outcome.
Wow. Thatâs not cool of them. Iâve been overwritten recently too and it sucks. Luckily I caught it quickly and decided to stop. They didnât even finish the whole part after I left
Paid subbers should have to abide by the rules. Otherwise, theyâre wasting both of our times. They could do another part, or move on to another drama that needs help too.
And I also think that in the volunteer discussion tab, we shouldnât have to have our comments âapprovedâ. Last week I posted about certain parts of mine and what to do about something and also that someone elseâs sub was in the wrong segment. And it vanished saying it was under review and to my knowledge it was never posted.
Such a pity this attitude since over the past years we tried to help newbies on how Viki works and respect other membersâ work in a team.
We are not talking about delaying an episode for months, it was about seconds, minutes when there was someone working there yet.
Itâs not about whether this person is a Viki staff is about for how long will Viki demand fast subtitles with new tools implemented and not paying the hard working contributors which made this possible.
We, the real contributors (specially the English contributors) and not the ones who show up to complete the missing segments (having a whole team working as fast as they can for having an episode ready for viewers).
If Viki thinks itâs necessary to bring in paid volunteers, the least they can do is to respect the rules the teams established and of course they shouldnât overwrite the subbersâ work.
It surprises me that Viki sends them out so early, even though the volunteer team is still busy subbing and not a day has passed yet.
It is as if they treat all the English viewers (and viewers from some other big languages here) as their sweet-heart children who always should get their way immediately. How cruel of us to expect them to wait 1 or 2 days longer for good subtitles! Meanwhile, if other languages donât get completed⊠well, who cares, right?
Unless Viki makes it extremely, extremely clear that volunteers do this in their own time and that the subs will come soon but not right away like magic, people will keep feeling entitled to see the subs immediately.
Another solution, which is unfair to those who donât need subtitles, is to withould the video until the subbing is completed. For this the system needs to be rebuild, so it wonât happen of course.
Or there could be a pop-up window for every episode stating: 'The subtitles in language X are not completed yet, are you sure you want to continue? â
A âNo, I will come back later.â
B âYes, continue to the videoâ.
And Viki should stop moderating team discussions and start moderating timed comments. Our jobs as moderators would be a lot more easier if words such as subtitles, subs and translation are automatically rejected in the tc. 9 out of 10 times itâs only to complain about them anyway
What is this?!!!
Unbelievable!!!**
This is inappropriate behavior, and on top of that, she is working to change the translations of the experienced chief editor!!
The VIKI STAFF must accept our objections and protests for these situations at least.
How unfair and rude! Viki should address this issue immediately. There is no point in requesting positive feedback through press interviews if volunteersâ time and efforts are ignored like that. Rules should be respected!
I donât think Viki sees it as an issue. Itâs been years that Viki votes for quantity and speed over quality.
Itâs the volunteers who pull their hair and spend their time worrying about quality subs, deadlines, perfect segments, timely results, precise translations and an overall enjoyable result for the viewers. Viki doesnât care one bit. It is very obvious from all the business decisions theyâve made.
That is really shocking and demotivating. What a thing to do! I hope Viki sees this post and pays attention to the problem, and doesnt just delete and ignore! This is a good way to lose volunteers.
The title of this is not right because I donât think the real problem here is the overwrite, since this happens even with volunteers and you said she was oblivious that you were working on the same subs together. This could be easily fixed by just talking to @jo_p66 and asking to be more careful. She is very nice and would understand. The real problem is Viki bringing in paid staff without informing or consulting the cm. Amy always asked me before bringing in extra help, so this is a first. The cm should talk to the staff about this. Set a time for the volunteers before the staff can step in. @amyk@vikicommunity
How rude and disrespectful of jo_p66 and other paid subbers to overwrite your subs and not following the subbing rules that are in place for years. Viki wanted paid subbers to make the job easier for the volunteers but paid or not they should follow the rules we have created so things go as smoothly as possible. Now instead of helping the subbers out they give people more stress because their subs are overwritten.
How should we see this? Are the subs by volunteers not good enough? Do volunteers not work hard enough for free? Do they want to get rid of us and do this to chase everyone away? Many great subbers have left already because of issues with Viki and Viki only seems to create more issues instead of solving them.
An apology is worthless if they keep doing it over and over again.
