One of the reasons why I choose not to work as a TE although I have been helping CEs, CMs and even some OL Moderators out privately, all without getting a single contribution point. It saddens me to see this growing resentment towards the TEs in general.
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Thank you for writing your point of view. Even though I donāt agree with every single point you make, it is refreshing to read something other than āoh, we should all be happy and thankful.ā
Coming from an OL community, some of us joined the English teams because of the bad quality of the English subs we often got to work with. But for monolingual English speakers, there is not that much choice, either.
So the good people need to be punished in order to prevent the bad ones from potentially abusing the system?
I have come across a few.
True. But we could make similar comparisons for GE and CE. Being a Dutch moderator is far less stressful than being a CE or a CS.
I am sorry youāve been having bad experiences. I know that you are a great TE and it would be a big loss to the community if you left us. On the other hand, I could also understand it. Iāve had several times in my Viki career where I came close to leaving and none of those occurred when I was still only in the Dutch community.
Where did you see resentment against TEs? That some of us are against Vikiās decision doesnāt mean that we are against TEs. I value them for what they do and I even like a lot of them personally. I am against Viki playing favorites. Thatās all.
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But this is true for all editors, and always has been.
Letās say that Viki paid subbers are better than volunteers most of the time (sometimes not) so there is less to change. Which is debatable, because they never follow Team Notes or use appellatives such as hyeong and nuna, often forget the italics, they donāt care about our preferred romanization but put their own, and also often donāt translate lyrics at all. So I cannot say that I edit much less now than before. A little less, maybe, but not a lot less.
We chose to become editors knowing that we wonāt have as many contributions as subbers. So what? I only take one project at a time, and still I have plenty of contributions, much more than needed to keep my Vikipass, without ever having to worry about whether the expiry date is near.
But some people are obsessed about their number of contributions, about being among the most prolific of the week or whatever. Viki has understood that there are many like that, so it throws some bone to them, and they yap drooling ecstatically and gratefully, saying that āGee, see, Viki listens to us, it gave us what we wanted!ā
In the meanwhile, every useful tool that we asked to be updated, every change in the contributorsās pages and the inbox that would make our life easier is still unaddressed. Instead, we get subathlons, badges and double contributions, yay! Panem et circenses. An ancient, proved method, to be sure.
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I have mixed feelings on this matter. On the one hand, I am well aware of how valuable our TEs are. Without them, Viki loses the edge that it has over its competitors when it comes to things like cultural nuances. We are stuck with pre-subs that are āwatered down.ā lacking the touches that others have mentioned. The TE pool is already dreadfully small, and Iād hate for it to get smaller. However, if the idea that they inspect every segment but donāt always make changes, therefore putting in time that isnāt ārewarded,ā is the catalyst for this new point system, then I feel like this change is misguided. They are not the only ones who do this. As a GE or CE, I also inspect every segment. I also put in time researching things or creating and upkeeping team notes, and good OL mods do the same - work that is necessary but gains no ārewards.ā Itās true that we take on those tasks voluntarily, but in the end, for me, itās not about the actual contribution counts. No matter how many hours a day I put into Viki, Iāve never even been within touching distance of the top 100, sometimes not even top 200. But thatās not why I volunteer on Viki. However, itās more about the message this sends that seems to suggest that one personās time and effort is somehow more valuable than anotherās. Thatās not a motivating message to send. And by NO means do I hold the TEs responsible for this perception. Not even a little bit. As a monolingual English editor, I do not want to imagine doing what I do as a CE or GE without the TEs.
I also appreciate some of the strides that Viki seems be making recently, and I will hope that this trend continues.
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Letās put it simply: If TEs ceased to exist on Viki, I would stop contributing on the spot.
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I donāt understand how the survey could have led to this. 
If they want to reward editors, they should reward all of them.
Is it the TEās responsability?
And what about the OL editors?
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Hello everyone. We just wanted to quickly clarify that the new Translation Editor (TE) role is meant to be applied to any language, not just English. This means that any Editors from other (non-source) languages who are doing translation editing from English to their language can be assigned this role. We hope this clears up any confusion. Thank you!
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I have significant concerns regarding this matter. Specifically, what effect (if any) will this have on our traditional TE role. While I acknowledge that I may be overthinking the situation or perhaps not fully grasping certain aspects, I am uncertain about how we should differentiate the tasks performed by our English TE from those carried out by an editor working in, for example, Spanish. To make a bit more sense, if the new role is named TE, then how do we draw the line between what a Translation editor does and what a OL editor does.
I sincerely appreciate that you are taking the time to read through our comments and consider our perspectives. I am also grateful that you are actively gathering more feedback from the community to ensure that all voices are heard and that we can collaboratively address these concerns effectively.
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That makes the insult to the other English editors even worse. CEs have the most stress of all editors and are most of all exposed to rude people. Itās a psychologically challenging role and on top of that, they have to thoroughly edit all episodes and lead the team. Why would anyone keep doing it if you are so clearly saying that itās of lesser importance to you?
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Now we really have a BIG problem: TE for other languages??? At this point, I have the vague impression that you are mixing the EN roles with OL and thatās not okay. And this probably started with sending the same survey to all the editors regardless of being an EN or OL editor.
First of all, what is a TE?
A person who natively knows the Asian language and is proficient in English. They can also not be native but theyāve learned the Asian language through education/a language program and they are highly proficient.
What is the main task of a TE?
To ensure the accuracy of the subtitles from the Asian language to English. Anything else is on GE and CE.
Do we need a TE role? Because now we only have the Editor role to be assigned to a contributor.
Yes, we need this role and we also need the General Editor and Chief Editor roles BUT we donāt need these roles to be used in any language; they are only for English editors.
Is the EN organization different from the OL one?
Yes, they have different working principles. Except for the big languages, where they have more editors per channel, most of the other languages have just 1 editor per channel and most of the time none (some contributors donāt even assign themselves to all the roles they have on the channel). Again, after the moderation limit, you put all the communities in the same pot disregarding the fact that each of the OL community has its peculiarities.
Ā
Now letās move to my concerns about this change, now that you mentioned āTE for any languageā, which is mostly based on my Romanian activity.
For an OL is a mandatory condition to know English
So this means that any OL subber is by default a Translation Editor (TE)!!!??? 
Even one who just started their activity on Viki so without any experience in multiple genres and Asian languages. This is totally wrong since many subbers are right from the start bad subbers (they lack a lot in their native language and also in English).
There is no way to ensure that we have only good contributors on Viki
Yes, this is the real truth of this platform: we donāt have a mandatory quality check system. Anyone who thinks they know EN and their native language can join Viki and start subbing without having their quality questioned and validated. Yes, is the same for EN, but since this is the source language for OL, the exposure makes it less vulnerable to having very bad EN editors. And they are spotted right away. So itās safe to say that at this moment we have only good and very good EN editors (TE, GE, CE). With the new EEA (English Editing Academy) we will take a step further to acknowledge these people.
Linked with the above 2 ideas, not every subber is also a good editor
Starting from the idea that you already know EN and your native language, to be an editor in your language you first need a lot of activity as a subber on many various channels. But not even after you achieve this experience you canāt be a 100% accredited editor in your language. Why? Because first of all, no one from Viki validated officially your quality as a subber. And while an EN editor has the entire OL community to validate them as a good/very good EN editor, we as OL editors only have our community. And we all know how the OL communities areā¦ full of hate, disputes, and people scheming against others from their community. So as outsiders, we canāt take for good any feedback about a contributor from their community.
A wave of TEs in the OL community just for the sake of double points
Based on my community activity, I can say that most of the moderators donāt edit their channels. And among those who edit them, they donāt assign themselves as Romanian Editors on the channels. Well, this is probably about to change as they will be excited to get double points for this activity, putting aside that not all of them can be editors because of the things I talked about above. So the normal Language Editor role is going to be forgotten for the new Translation Editor role with double points.
Now here are my final thoughts on this situation:
- I totally support the idea of having the EN editing roles (TE, GE, CE) created on Viki and also be awarded double points. We have an entire EN-OL community and the upcoming EEA to validate those who are real EN editors.
- Together with those who think like me, I kindly ask you to postpone this change and reconsider it entirely. The OL should really not be considered for this. Any person who is not here for fame and points (and ābonesā, like someone insulted some of us) can agree with me.
- Personally, Iām not going to add myself as a Romanian TE and Iām going to continue supervising my community to see the new TEs popping up. And I also have a question for you, @vikicommunity: whatās going to happen if I report all the TEs of my language? Because there is no logical and valid reason for assigning ourselves as Romanian TEs. We already have the Romanian Editor role which is by far what we need now.
- Another question for you, @vikicommunity: what are your criteria to establish that an OL contributor is eligible for the Translation Editor role in their language? Letās take for example the Romanian language. I want to know the language and quality aspects considered by you to validate someone as a proficient Romanian Translation Editor who should be awarded double points.
Thank you for your time!
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As an Ol editor, my experience is that we are all editors in one, including TE. I know that some languages differentiate among different kinds of editors, but most of us donāt. Yet, since we actually do do TE work, I think itās justified for us to be added for that role.
That said, I do acknowledge that specifically the English editors have a bigger load to carry, not necessarily because of the total amount of what they do but for being rushed and having all eyes on them. I canāt even begin to imagine what stress they must go through. And for that reason, I think it would be more fair to give the extra points to the English editors, but then to ALL of them, not just to the TEs.
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Thank you for the clarification. It does make a lot more sense like that.
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Ā
We already have the Editor role for any language so there is no reason for having a TE role for OL and rewarded double points. So we basically now have a Language Editor role and a Language Translation Editor role. So, for example, I just want to know the difference between the Romanian Editor role (the existing one) and the Romanian Translation Editor role (the new one) rewarded double points since their activity is completely the same.
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I think Viki wants to give editors more contribution points because it takes more effort to edit an episode than it does to simply translate it (also into OL).
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This should not solely be for ātranslation editors,ā though.
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As an editor and one of those contributors who spend almost all their free time on Viki (because thatās how I want to spend my free time), I totally agree with this even though I can continue my editing with just 1 point per edit without any fuss. Yes, is true, as an editor I spend more time on a channel than as a subber. I must prepare the episodes before the GO to the team which involves some researching of some terms and expressions + the formal and informal way of addressing to make it easier for the subbers, and then I must go back and edit the episodes once they are fully subbed.
The actual problem here is that they decided to create a second editor role for OL, double rewarded, without explaining the differences between them. Why not change the reward system of the actual Language Editor role?
If I continue the same activity as a Romanian Editor will I not be considered a good editor because I didnāt assign myself to the Romanian Translation Editor role?
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From personal experience (OL), it takes more mental power to edit, but going through episodes goes faster than subbing raw - the number of contributions/hour (speed of contributing) for me as an editor is higher than translating raw. (Although the total number of contributions is lower per episode than subbing.)
This does not include making sheets, communication with the team and giving feedback, of course.
However, for small languages (and some mid-sized ones), this is done by the moderator, who is the main and only editor in the team (TE + GE + CE). Luckily @dimghro has explained a the main differences between English and OL teams with regards to editing 
Now, lets say Iām a solo Mod. I am then both the subber AND the editor (TE/GE/CE whatever). Which function should I assign myself? Should I choose to be Croatian TE on top of being a Mod and just blatantly get 2 points per my contributions? Seems weird to me 
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Does it? In my experience, the default setting of the subtitler editor makes it extra challenging to get through it quickly and sometimes, you even have to correct multiple mistakes in 1 sub.
It used to be when we didnāt have the editor role yet. Nowadays, it depends on whatever the moderator decides.
In the new system, you could indeed justify doing thatā¦
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Just changing the editor role period would have been better in that case. Or only the English editor role. All English editors and just maybe OL too. But definitely not only TEs.
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Sorry. I have a question: the new role is not released yet, how we can be sure that when an OL editor role is assigned is not automatically a TE? In OL community there is only one editor role, there are not GE CE TE, so every OL editor could be a TEā¦ We will see tomorrow, I guess. But I fear all this could start a witch hunt to find the ones that dare to take a role that they have done for years and from now on they will fear to be an editor and be accused to do it only for the double points, that donāt have much importance, since most of the OL editors are already Gold QC, with thousands of subtitlesā¦ If Viki will give me a set of cooking pots for my points, like they do in supermarket in Italy (10 euro spent=1 point), maybe I will be more interested in earning these infamous pointsā¦ (just kidding!)
Personally speaking, I assign myself both the moderator and editor roles if I am doing both, because some OL mods are doing only the moderator, but many are also editors, and mod and editor do different things. Again, why I have to stop now? Itās a Viki decision, I donāt care about the points, but why I have to think and fear if someone will think badly of me for doing what Iām doing for years?
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