Dear community,
Thank you for being patient with us.
We’d like to let you know about the changes you will see on your Project Contributions page in the upcoming weeks.
We are (1) fixing the issue where some of you observed that your Project Contribution pages were missing some projects or were completely empty. In addition, as shared with you in our April 2021 updates, we are (2) bringing back the video blurb (including shortcuts to Subtitle Editor and Segment Timer) to your Project Contributions page. These will be released sequentially over the next weeks.
We share further details below.
(1) Fixing issue with empty Project Contribution pages
What happened?
In April, in compliance with licensing contracts, the team at Viki needed to archive all channels whose licenses have expired. The unintended consequence of archiving these channels was that the channels got removed from view on the Project Contribution page of community members who contributed to these channels. This is why many of our community members, especially long-time contributors, saw that
- Their Project Contribution page was empty
- Project Contribution pages across profiles were unevenly paginated
*Note: If you have contributed on a channel that has been archived, your contribution counts are not affected.
Our solution
We understand that having a complete log of the channels that community members have participated in is critical in helping them land their next project, and is especially useful for Channel Managers and language Moderators in the recruitment of team members. We want to continue to facilitate that, and thankfully the team was able to come up with a solution that allows archived channels to continue showing up on Project Contribution pages while still being accordant with licensing contracts.
What’s new
Despite being archived, we are bringing back the channels to community members’ Project Contribution page. Your role and number of contributions on the channel (if any) will also remain. These channels, however, will be view-only and will not be clickable. This is to ensure that our community’s needs are met while still being compliant with the contract terms with our content providers.
| Previously | What’s new |
|---|---|
| If a community member has one or more contribution (subtitle or segment) on any channel, the channel will show up on their Project Contribution page, regardless of channel status (active or expired; no indication) | If a community member has one or more contribution (subtitle or segment) on any channel, the channel will show up on their Project Contribution page, regardless of channel status (active, expired, or archived) |
| Expired channels could be found on Viki > On channels where license has expired, the channel will display as unavailable in region |
Expired channels that are archived will no longer be found on Viki |
| Community members were able to click-through to view expired channels via Project Contribution page | Expired channels that are archived will continue to be displayed on community members’ Project Contribution page as view-only > Archived channels will not have active channel pages |
(2) Bringing back the video blurb
Why did we remove the video blurb?
Information displayed on the video blurb — including last contributed episode and last contributed date — has been inaccurate. The information here reflects the last contributed episode and date of any volunteer who last worked on the channel, instead of the profile owner’s own activity.
In addition to this, in lieu of the team’s ongoing efforts to fix several problems with contribution counts, having to keep this component was, in technical aspects, in conflict with our fixes. Extracting the video blurb was to help pave our system for more development in the future. Considering both scenarios, we decided to sunset the video blurb.
Bringing back the video blurb and things to note
Once the video blurb was removed, we read feedback and saw how without it, especially the shortcuts to Subtitle Editor and Segment Timer, our community felt heavily inconvenienced. Hence after some deliberate adjustments to our engineering plans, we are bringing back the video blurb.
However, bringing back the video blurb will not be without limitations. We want the community to be aware that “Updated X months ago” and the last updated episode will continue to be inaccurate, if not even more inaccurate than before, until the contribution count system has been fixed. This is due to data migration issues for our contribution count fixes (coming soon; to be announced at a later date).
Once the contribution count system has been fixed, and as community members continue to contribute, the discrepancies will gradually lessen and the information displayed on the video blurb will eventually be representative.
We hope this post can address the questions, concerns, doubts and frustration you’ve had over the past few weeks.
Love that you’re bringing back the video blurb. And thanks for the info on the archived channels, I was about to go mad searching for channels I knew were there somewhere on Viki, lol.
