[Viki Community Team] Applications Manager Announcement

[vikicommunity]

Hello community!

We’ve heard from the Viki Contributor Community that managing applications from Project Finder via inbox is difficult and makes it hard to keep track of which applications you have already accepted or rejected.

We agree! To help make the recruitment process easier, starting Sunday, June 4th, 2023 @ 7PM PDT, a new Applications Manager feature will be added to Project Finder to help you track and manage applications!

What is it?

Applications Manager is a new space within Project Finder that will allow Channel Managers and Specific Language Moderators to filter and review subtitler applications for their channels that were submitted through Project Finder.

Subtitler applications submitted through Project Finder will now appear in Applications Manager, your centralized space for overseeing applications and keeping everything neatly organized. You’ll be able to review, sort, approve and reject applications quickly and easily!

How does it work?

Before we proceed, let’s review some key terminology:
Recruiters = Channel Managers and Language Moderators for each language
Applicants = Anyone who submits a subtitler application through Project Finder

In Applications Manager, Recruiters will be able to:

• Conveniently view and manage applications for your channels.
• Access channel applications:
  • The Channel Manager will see all of the applications that are sent, no matter the language.
  • Language Moderators will see applications for the respective language(s) that they are moderating.
• View applicants’ information within Applications Manager.
• Filter applications by various criteria, including applicants’ Viki Pass access, application status (Pending, Accepted, Rejected), and team recruitment status (open or closed).
• Accept a candidate and add them to their team, or reject an application with the click of a button.

What’s new for Applicants?

• Applicants will not see many changes on their end. However, instead of Inbox opening up a conversation with a recruiter, applicants will now receive a notification that their application has been submitted. They will also receive a notification informing them of the recruiter’s decision once action has been taken on their application.

We hope this new feature will help recruiters by allowing them to better track which applications have been accepted or rejected, and to more easily add accepted applicants into their team. Application Manager should also help applicants more easily differentiate regular conversations from application-specific messages so they’ll be able to know when they’ve heard from a team.

To learn more about how to use Applications Manager, check out What is the Applications Manager? and Project Finder Subtitler Applications Contributor Help Center articles. In the meantime, here’s a preview of the Applications Manager space:

Application Manager Preview

Share your feedback!

After the new feature rolls out, we would love to hear feedback from recruiters once you’ve had the chance to use it. You can find the feedback form in the Applications Manager space. Just click on ‘Give feedback’ or here when you’re ready to share!

Thank you all! We hope you look forward to this new space.

Love,
Viki Community

Please kindly note that if your team is no longer recruiting, we recommend that you hide your language(segmenting) team from Project Finder.

[manganese]

Dear @vikicommunity

Thank you for this excitingly new feature. It really will be a godsend in so many ways.

I have one observation, though, regarding the below…

@vikicommunity

How does it work?

Before we proceed, let’s review some key terminology:
Recruiters = Channel Managers and Language Moderators for each language
Applicants = Anyone who submits a subtitler application through Project Finder

I notice that Chief Segmenters are not mentioned as recruiters. Does this mean that the Application Manager will not be able to used by them and that Chief Segmenters will still need to recruit their teams the old-fashioned way?

Best regards,
Manganese

[zyxw]

Wow, that seems nice <3

I’m wondering, if there will be some sort of automatic sorting system for Channel Managers? I mean sorting for groups of: moderators, subbers and segmenters. If they will see applications from for all roles together, it will get overwhelming really fast.

[irmar]

Wait, all the interaction with applicants will be just “accept” or “refuse”? We won’t be able to open a dialogue, ask them additional questions, ask them to take a test or explain our refusal?

[iria360]

Or that means that you will have to email all those applicants one by one to have more info…

[mirjam_465]

Will we get notifications on VikiMail or are we supposed to check Project Finder all the time?

[xylune]

If there are no notifications, it seems pointless to me. There are x pages of projects, and it’s not possible to differentiate between Moderator and CM projects. Usually, you wouldn’t check some 3-year-old CM project out of the blue. Maybe it’s nice for new projects if people even use it. As a moderator, I’m not sure if I even should use it for channel applications as people might not know about it or they are not used to it. So my application might be lost in space if I did.

[damiechan]

@vikicommunity Would it be possible to automatically hide the languages which currently do not have a language moderator? As per the guidelines, we can’t accept subbers if there is no moderator.

[zyxw]

I think listing:
“You have unanswered applications on:
list of channels”

at the top of the page would be enough. I think it would be really easy to code too (maybe not, because I haven’t seen the Viki code and how they do things, but idk).
Or just filtering at the project level too so you only see the projects that someone applied to.

[someofliz]

1. The question is, who of those of us, who have been on Viki for some time, uses the Project Finder? Usually, we don’t even open the site. If we want to be a moderator, we keep tabs on the show page and directly contact the CM. And if we want to subtitle, we wait until the moderator for our respective language is announced and contact them directly. Most often this also doesn’t happen on Viki itself, since the language communities often have other communication platforms which are more easily to access and allow seeing messages in real time.

2. What is if I got a new Channel and someone applies to be a subtitler while I haven’t added the moderator yet. Will the moderator still see the application, after I added them, or will they only show up for me, and I would need to inform the moderator about them?

So in conclusion, this new feature is more confusing as it will be of help, at least for me.

[flowersnacc]

First tests…

CONS:
Someone sent me a subtitler application:
• I have not received any notification that someone sent me a subtitler application (neither in my inbox nor per e-mail).
• If the people I rejected want any feedback, they need to open yet another chat.
• Once I found the Applications Manager, I realized the projects are sorted by the date I was added as a moderator + there was no notification dot or anything for the project the person applied for. This means I have to go through every single project manually to see if I even received a subtitler application via the project finder at all.

I sent a subtitler application to another moderator:
• Only I got the automated message for my own application (so in order for the moderator to talk to me they have to open another chat, which makes the inbox even messier)
• I was able to apply for a second time, no matter if I already got rejected or accepted before (fun fact: I had already been added before my first application)

PROS:
• The only thing that DID work well was that the applicant got automatically added to the channel once they were accepted.

CONCLUSION:
The way it is now, the applications via the project finder will get lost even more frequently than before. As Xylune said… some will probably be lost in space. While the inbox is messy, we at least know that we received a specific application at some point. (My workaround: I keep the links to important chats separately in a spreadsheet so I don’t have to endlessly scroll to get back to them)

I’ll definitely make sure to send feedback on this topic to Viki directly.

To be honest, the German community (and many others) doesn’t really use the project finder to apply for a project as a subtitler except for newbies wanting to get started on Viki (we use other external messengers since we already know our moderators most of the time as we have worked with them before - as Liz already said). So it would have been more helpful for the international communication between CMs and potential moderators. Also, especially because it is new people applying via the project finder, it’s even more important that we see their messages so we can help them get started on Viki. The ones that already know how things work on Viki have plenty ways to get in contact with the moderators.

[zyxw]

@flowersnacc

I was able to apply for a second time, no matter if I already got rejected or accepted before

Did you appear two times on the manager?

[flowersnacc]

Yes, I did appear twice on the Applications manager of the other moderator:

My inbox:
I received notifications for my own applications, while the actual moderator did not.

[hhnike]

@damiechan

Would it be possible to automatically hide the languages which currently do not have a language moderator? As per the guidelines, we can’t accept subbers if there is no moderator.

That would at least also secure that there won’t be any applications for very old dramas you have as CM, since the already existing mods should have finished the translations.

In addition to flowersnacc’s text:
Once you accept someone, the acceptance mail will be a chat in your inbox, allowing you and the volunteer to discuss the next steps. But as far as I see, there’s no direct link in the application manager to jump into that conversation, which could have been a plus. But as mentioned before, the German community doesn’t really rely on Viki mail or project finder to recruit translators.

For me, it could have been a nice idea for moderator applications to have them all in one place, being able to sort them by language, accept or reject with just one click. But without having a “I want to be a moderator” tab in the project finder, it all seems rather pointless to me.

[someofliz]

In addition. Why do we have to see all of our channels, where we are moderators? If the subtitles in our language are complete, or we’ve already hidden the team there is no use for them showing up, since no one can apply through the project finder anyway. It would at least clean the space up a bit, and we could concentrate more on the projects which still need help, instead of first having to first scroll through all our channels as CMs and moderators.

[zyxw]

1. That makes it open to spamming, I can imagine getting 10 applications from the same person
2. What happens if the second application gets accepted (is there some sort of bug or it checks if you were already added) or rejected (nothing happens as the person is already added?)?

That’s an interesting topic.

[someofliz]

You can only send three applications per day, so hopefully people don’t start spamming every day.

[someofliz]

We also have to be very careful and look twice if someone has a Viki Pass.
I had a case, where in the first small message it was written, the person had no Pass or QC Benefits but as I viewed the application I saw, that they have a Viki Pass.

So if I’m having a Drama where a Pass is needed, I need to be careful not to reject someone too hastily.

[bozoli]

We can also probably assume that, if the applicant changes their subscription, those changes will not be updated in the sent application. So they will have to reapply.

[damiechan]

I noticed that as a CM, I get the applications even if there is a moderator. If there is a moderator, it’s not my decision to add someone, and if there is no moderator, I shouldn’t add anyone, so now I’m wondering why I’m getting subtitler applications as a CM?