I’d like to know if and when a summer subathon 2020 might start. I think last year it was in July but I’m not sure.
In the past it happened that I just translated over 1 000 lines and then short after that the subathon was announced… I cannot subtitle 1 000+ lines every week. It’s impossible time-wise and project-wise.
So it’ll be really great if VIKI would announce that earlier this time and/or also counts the submitted lines/segments that are done before in the same month too instead of only counting the submissions that are done within the 2 weeks.
I think that would be good for every volunteer no matter if someone is mainly working as a segmenter or a subtitler; translating origin to English or English to another language.
Thanks for writing to us about the annual summer subathon, and we’re sure other community members have been wondering about this as well!
As of now, there are no plans for a 2020 summer subathon. Subathons and other community events are important topics our team has had to rethink and discuss for this year, and how we’d like to proceed moving forward. This includes how we can improve and how we run them. Especially with COVID-19 affecting people around the world, our team wants to remain thoughtful and respectful of everyone and their loved ones. For any subathons later this year, we’ll be sure to give even earlier notice of when we plan to do them. So thanks again for writing to us! We really appreciate the input, and welcome suggestions!
Not nitpicking here, but how is respecting people touched by COVID-17 related in any way with subtitling and subathlons?
If anything, Viki has been helping those people in an indirect way. The quarantine has meant a flood of new users and subbers on Viki. Many people were at home and had more time on their hands, and they felt comforted by watching dramas and many of them decided they wanted to help as well by becoming volunteers. It’s a good thing, isn’t it?
Now the quarantine is lifted in most countries, but some of these users will stay on, because they liked the experience and got “hooked”.
(I don’t particularly care for subathlons, badges and such, I was just curious about this sentence in your post, it didn’t make any sense to me)
My guess is that they may think that people don’t want a badge that reminds them of a time when many people died worldwide and some may even suffer from personal loss (family or friends who died because of covid19).
You are right in that there have been more new users on Viki, and we are happy that dramas can be a source of comfort for people. With all these new community members, our team would love to get them excited with events like the subathon! What we mean by being respectful is that we are also thinking of community members who have been impacted by COVID-19 in other ways, and have had to prioritize health and taking care of family, relocation due to shelter-in place, etc. over volunteering.
One thing we can say is that with all the new users, we’ve been working on improving the new user onboarding experience. In addition to that, we want to be more strategic about when we launch subathons, thus why a summer one has not been planned for this year. More things are coming, and we look forward to sharing them!
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