Please find below a summary of the conclusions of the call between Viki Community Staff and community members on Sept. 27, 2019.
Attendees
Staff: Marilliam, Camille, Amy, Sean
Community: anna79_9, irmar, cgwm808, piranna, niennavalar, and theparrot
First off, an apology from the Community Team:
We are really sorry for everything that happened with the machine translations. We were not intending to upset anyone. There are of course things we need to look at and make better in the future. I want to sincerely apologize for all the troubles and issues that happened. I know you all have a lot of questions. We can have an open conversation about anything you want to do. We can go through the questions you shared. I also have a lot of topics I would like to go through with you.
This meeting is not only to apologize and make sure weāre on the same page, this is a very serious situation and it needs to be addressed in this manner. The most important part is to rebuild the relationship. Thereās the trust problem between us and the community itself. And of course, this starts with explaining why all of these things have happened in the past. We promised things in the past and they havenāt been released.
Thereafter, these are the main points from our discussion, including going through the list of questions and recommendations from the community.
Machine translation implementation on French titles
This recent implementation was a mistake, nor was it meant to overwrite existing community-created subtitles
Though it was implemented in 2017 and overwrote subtitles then, the conclusion we came to after that instance was that we should NOT be overwriting subs. If it did overwrite existing community-created subtitles on September 19, that was a bug
Identification of channels that are considered āinactiveā will be improved
On the Suggestion Tool front, we want to give power to the contribution teams to add and remove the suggestions on channels and episodes as needed, to streamline processes and avoid long editing from the teams involved
We are committed to finding solutions via improvements on the community itself, by enhancing current tools available for contributors
The machine translation tool itself needs further improvements which we have no intentions of experimenting or using it as broadly as previous
Future use of machine translation to be as minimal as possible; If there is future machine translation use, more advance notice and clear deadlines will be communicated to Channel Managers and Moderators
Changes in Viki Staff delaying roll out of improvements for the community
There have been many changes in staff, including the engineering and product management teams that work on community-focused improvements, as well as Community Team staff
At this time, there are 4 Community Managers and 1 community-focused engineer
We are allocating more engineering resources to focus on community-focused improvements and features
Timeline and more transparency on community improvements
Viki to improve communications on changes, including site changes, not just features that are viewer-oriented (e.g. Viki homepage change)
We are open to do more beta testing for larger site changes
Currently in the works: Inbox improvements, Project finder (with volunteer finder improvements to be included in future versions), Moderation improvements related to channel hoarding, comments, and reviews, and other tools to prevent abuse
Plans to share regular monthly updates
Geoblocking
We are in talks with our new legal counsel and weāll be updating once we have more information on this.
Channel Hoarding
We are on the same page on tackling this issue. Currently the workflow to moderate requires a lot of manual processes, so we will be working on automation to enforce guidelines, which also will be improved on
To better help us, please report any users you know who hoard channels so that we can more efficiently stop this type of abuse in the meantime
Improve onboarding to bring on new contributors
Streamline onboarding processes and tutorials to ensure newcomers are able to get started more easily.
We would like to work closely with community on tutorials to educate new contributors
Adding Editor Role
We understand that this is an integral part of the channel team workflow that was championed by the community itself.
An Editor role will be added, we are still in the process of figuring out how to fairly count these contributions
Hi @camiille and thank you for publishing the replies from Viki Staff, Iāve personally appreciated all of this!
I Just wanted to ask you about one thing!
If we know a user whoās a channel hoarder, where is it possible to report the username of this person? By using the Viki help center or throughout a private message to someone thatās from the Viki staff like you?
Best Regards
I know that a volunteer started to collect information, since Viki staff is limited, maybe you will be contacted.
That is, if they violated against the guidelines, but this is not a subject in the guidelines now. So itās sensitive to use it to flag somebody. However, it is a subject that is now in talks with Viki and might be in the next update for moderatorās guidelines.
I really wish people would be more aware about guidelines and its meanings and VIKI would not hide it behind XXX clicks (it is not easy to find the necessary information in any case so that should be improved as well)
I think they added the orange info now but the ānot more than ~3 on air titles + being active as CM, Modā¦ā was already a part before.
PS:
If someone has more channels or mod positions than others and is still able to be active I wouldnāt call it hoarding. Same goes for subbers, they should be also included in new anti-hoarding and anti-inactivity guidelines since in the end a project suffers as well when the subbers donāt do their job because of joining dozens of projects but can just handle a few.
The problem that Iāve faced, (Iām from the Italian Teams) is that a few bunches of people grab ALL the dramas that just came out and put themselves as CM or MOD. After this, even when Iāve personally tried to take my first mod work, for a drama that I was really interested to grab, the reply was:āā sorry but no, weāre already the cm and modsāā. And also, they grab the channels, write down like 200 subs, do not edit, do not anything else more and the channels literally die. So we have A LOT of channels without subs (on-air and normal ones), and thatās a huge problem because of them. Thatās the kind of people that I want to report and I hope that other languages teams will join this cause!
Thank you, everyone, for all the replies, Iāll try to send them a private message for this trouble!
Thank you again!!
I responded to your post telling me itās not against the guidelines and I only think itās against it. Thatās why I posted it. Why should I read all posts in any case that are part of a discussion between other users when I replied to you because of what you wrote to me?
Being inactive and not taking care is already part of the guidlines what you seem not to know so no reason to get mad that I posted the guideline link since I assumed that the origin post was meant like that and as you see now, itās about inactivity too, because like I also wrote why should one want to report a CM or Mod that is active on several channels? Wouldnāt make sense at all.
So what I wrote was not wrong about using the profileās page drop down menu to report these cases even though you said the opposite. The drop down menu has a form for different topics and needed information for the admins so they got all the necessary informations at once. What do you think why such forms exist if not for using it for these cases? (the menu does have an improper managing option too, you know that?)
There is no line: Write us a PM in any case plus it was already said elsewhere that users should use the report form to report these things ā¦
PS:
As I also already wrote before it is sometimes hard to find the necessary info on VIKI so here the link how to report someone:
Should we share Camilleās announcement to followers as we did before stating our problem? Because I feel it would be good if people follow up what happened and if Viki doesnāt apply what we asked they could press Viki as well.
Agree. Absolutely, it should be shared. Not everyone in the Vikian community knows about this Discussion site, let alone visit it.
In fact, I think it should be shared by Viki, officially from Viki to the entire volunteer community. Better yet, to the entire Vikian community. I suppose thereās a way for Viki to broadcast or mass message this update.
@camiille, @VikiCommunityTeam, thank you for your apology and update. We look forward to improvements and upgrades as laid out, and in particular, to a transparent Viki-volunteer sphere. Everyone knows that transparency leads to trust and is an ongoing process that will yield ongoing positive results. Thank you for taking positive steps in the desired direction.
Would you please share this update with the entire Vikian community (volunteers and viewers)? Or, at least, with the volunteer community? Thank you.
On our end, the community team is working on the new communications plans moving forward, including looking at using the Discussions to share official announcements and updates. Once we have this figured out, weāll send out a more formal announcement to the entire community.
Exactly. Hoarding is actually a mental illness. When people fill their houses with stuff they donāt even use, to the point that there is no space to walk. When people fill their computers with stuff they will never have the time to read or watch. When crafters fill a whole room with yarn that their expected natural life is not enough to use to knit or crochet.
In the same way, Viki volunteers who take on too many projects that they donāt have the time to work on.
Itās not about the number of projects per se. If a volunteer is retired, with no job, no children and grandchildren nor a dog, and has almost nothing to do all day, and can sub or edit for 6-8 hours, and finishes all her projects, then we could say sheās a bit obsessed, but canāt accuse her of hoarding.
Hoarding is when you get greedy and get more than you can manage, with the result that many of those projects remain unfinished.
I personally know of a mod who has about 47 projects, many of which loooong Chinese dramas of more than 80 or even 100 episodes, most of which she has never even touched. Zero completion in her language. Not even the first episode!
Another one, we all know that one, who takes ALL projects in her language, completes the first 1 or 2 episodes and then abandons them, to ask for more on air-popular ones.
Naturally, it would be the CMās job to check this and never give work to mods who have many unfinished projects. But, the way the Project Contributions page is now, itās very difficult to find that information. Thatās why we asked Viki, among other things, to make this page more useful. To put drama completion percentage and various other filters, so that all the info would be immediately visible to anyone visiting the page.
In the meanwhile, when you write to Viki about this person, make sure you have all the data. Number of dramas where there is 0% completion and then, in increasing order, the dramas where the percentage of completion is small.
Be careful,
the number of subtitles a mod has is not really relevant, because not all moderators create or edit subtitles. So you have to go on each dramaās page and check the episodes one by one to see at what point the translation is. Itās a long and boring job, thatās why Viki staff donāt have the time to do it.
sometimes Other Languages, for instance Italian, will remain undone not because itās the Italian modās fault, but because the English is not complete, has not been translated and/or released. So you also have to make sure English is 100% and see on the cover page how many episodes were released for other languages. Only if English is 100% - or at least is ahead of the Italian by many episodes (for instance, in a 16-episode drama, the English is at episode 10 but the Italian at episode 2), we can say this mod is stalling.
Thank you for your willingness to help rid Viki from this plague.
We were discussing that, same as we have now a night mode and a day mode of a Viki homepage, we could also have a volunteer mode. Some of the suggestions for it are written under.
Asides from occasional formal announcements, we could really use just one page with shortcuts to stuff we need on a regular basis, such as getting into your projects or reporting a malfunction of the volunteer tools and general status on these bugs.
In this particular example of reporting a tool malfunction, right now each user must:
find out on their own that a tool is buggy
think maybe itās her computer, internet connection or another technical error
check two separate pages for any word from the community (Discussions and Bugs&Issues)
my least favorite: check VikiStatus on Twitter
We know that Bugs&Issues is supposed to be THE point of gathering for these issues, but it is often filled up with viewers complaining about something technical, such as casting, or, ironically, asking for subs. So, I feel that those particular pages are more for the Viki users, not so much for the volunteers.
Bottom line, could you consider having only one place for all of the basic everyday functions the volunteers would need, including regular site development information to the volunteers?
