[Viki Community Team] Community Call 9/27/2019

General Discussion
21

Lutra made us recently revisit Viki’s Volunteer guidelines where it states for mods:

Contribute at least 3000 subtitles, in the Moderator’s language, before becoming a Moderator. (For on-air titles or any title without videos, these subtitles can be created after videos are made available.)

Edit: Now I realize that this refers to total number of subs a volunteer has.

But, seriously, what kind of a moderator doesn’t contribute anything to her project? That means she or he doesn’t even have to know English and their target language because their sole function as a Mod is to find subbers that do know it. By that definition I could be a Mod for Italian, Czech and Arabic.

Primary job of a moderator is to finish a project. Second primary? To ensure the quality of the sub by editing.

The Volunteer Guidelines should be changed. A Moderator should have to contribute at least 1000 subs per series and a 100 subs per movie.

A series usually has 12.000-20.000 subs. That means that a Mod should contribute to the project with about 5-8% of the subs. And that is not really much.

By making it obligatory for the Moderator to participate in the subbing process, we would also reduce hoarding projects.

Just imagine if you have 10 projects (some hoarders have a 100 even). It means you would have to contribute at least 10.000 subs. And that’s definitely not so easy for those that are used to doing the bare minimum.

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22

That is not relevant to what we’re discussing. Yes, she must have done at least 3000 subtitles at some point to become a moderator (and usually moderators have much, much more than that) but after that, on that particular drama one is researching, she may have appointed another editor.

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23

Yes, I just realized it :cry: I just finished editing my post

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24

The English moderator on a project typically contributes zero subtitles. Because there are three different Editors for this job. They are also called moderators, but in fact they are only editors. Yes, you may wonder what does the moderator do, in that case. Well, she gathers the team (so she does have to judge who is good), she sends notifications, the green light for starting and the thank you cards, makes the cover page and… I can’t think of anything else.
On the Facebook Group of Italian subbers and mods, they often post this:
“I have been given the moderation of X drama. Looking for 12 subbers and two editors”.
Then they leave the editing to the two editors (who do one episode per week each). They prepare the guidelines, they arrange and organize the whole thing, but they don’t sub nor edit. And that’s why they have many projects each.
I know of another Italian mod who has a permanent group of 40 subbers whom she assigns to those of her projects that need more work. Among those subbers, she has 4-5 capable editors. This particular lady also does the final edit, but she tells me that the editors are so good that often she doesn’t need to change more than a few subs per episode.

My way of working is different. For me, if I don’t put my hand in the dough it’s not fun. But I just wanted to point out that it’s not at all unusual to see a mod who doesn’t sub nor edit.

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25

English has it’s own rules and regulations. I’m not talking about that. Those few bigger languages might have enough volunteers to follow the same way of operating in teams.

But any other language asides from those few… If a moderator has zero or low number of subs - they are not doing their job right.

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26

I think bozoli mentioned an important aspect for languages with fewer volunteers and/or dramas that are not that popular or/and with more than 10, 20 episodes.

That’s not just a moderator related issue. Some translators do the same and by that they may either slow down a drama’s progress a lot or/and cause more work for those who then have to help out.

So the hoarding occurs everywhere, in any volunteer’s role. Some have already problems to finish or even work on the projects they already have and join more and more and more… and if such a volunteer does not only hoard channels as mod but does the same as subber the problem multiplicates, especially when there is not just one volunteer like that but several for the same drama.

Like someone already wrote in a post, it is not per se a specific project number that shows that someone is a hoarder, because one person may have already problems to work on a lower number of projects than another person that has twice as much projects.

To handle that issue a better volunteer tool is needed in my opinion, that offers clearer informations about acitivity on already taken projects, amount of projects, status of the projects (the tool should show progress of edited/relased English subs as well so you’d see if another language is really behind or not) etc.

The needed informations are already on VIKI’s mainpage but they aren’t organized and visualized in a way that it would help to provide a better workflow.

The tool could also automatically ban volunteers from taking new projects if they are hoarders/non active / project hoppers, e.g. volunteer A has 5 projects, joins 3 new, abandanon 4 old projects => unable to take/join any new projects until s/he finished the 4 abandoned projects.

The ban could be in the way that such a volunteer can’t be added to new projects anymore, maybe an info icon on the volunteer guide as well or also blocked from requesting new projects (with message like: please finish your already taken projects before taking new).

VIKI should put more effort in such tools than into machine translations… that such tools already exist and work (more or less) can be seen in certain online games for finding groups, ingame statistics about activity and other necessary informations and/or via fanpages/fantools that use the official public game datas to bring it in a good visualized overview.

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27

Yes, that was exactly part of my proposal (it has been approved and is visible now, yippy!).
To show percentage of completion in English and percentage of completion in the moderator’s language. Even these two things would be enough to see at a glance.
Because if a show is 100% complete in English, but her own language lags, it’s enough to go to the show’s cover page and make sure the English is not only complete but released.
To save from that extra step, I suggested we have a “released” button, which immediately would signal “released” on another column on the volunteers’ Project Contributions pages.
Therefore, if the English is both 100% complete AND released, then there is no excuse if her own language is stalling on more than 10 or 20 projects. Right?

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28

I feel like this would create problems if the English subs ever needed editing later after the release.
I mean technically. I feel like it would produce some pesky bugs.

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The “released” button shouldn’t affect the possibility to change the subs, of course - it’s just an announcement of status. So the release button would pose no problem at all.
The English translation often does need post-release editing. Sometimes it’s just typos or a minor change in wording, not affecting the meaning, therefore is of no concern for Other Languages . In case there are changes affecting the meaning, the Chief Editor sends a group message to all the O.L. mods pointing out the exact place of what has been changed, so that, if they wish, they may update their own translations.

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30

it it? how? where? o.O
I don´t see anything

31

I took some time and re-read the discussion and your PM.
To do us or only me a favor in the future.
If you got advice from Viki I ask of you to state that no need to prove it, we will believe you.
Or write “you should”, if you are sure of something instead of “you can”, that leave less room for “variations”.
I do not comment here to discredit anyone, if you have that impression of me it’s sad, but I guess I can’t help it.

From your profile it states that you are kind of a “freshman” here at Viki, I hope you won’t take these words as offensive again. I am an “old school” like Viki likes to name us and have probably read the guidelines several times a year. Where do you think the guidelines for volunteers came from a big part was suggested by volunteers most of them now “old school”. I took part in the discussion back then and I do today. The problem is that over the years the observance of some guidelines was more consequently done than others this is one of the reasons we are at this point. The way how to handle or how to change the way of looking after the “hoarding problem” was recently a subject in the chat with Viki, so maybe things (guidelines) will change again in the near future. Changes in guidelines is what volunteers are not aware of at the time it happens may result from the lack of a newsletter of that kind, there is no footnote of previous releases. There is no QM system visible to the volunteers. The same in the Help Center with only stating the last change in hours or days, it does not display the former one(s). (Help Center by the way underwent reconstruction a few days ago.)

I hope I didn’t make you mad again, it’s just that at the moment even if there are guidelines, we can/may assume there will be changes again since volunteers and Viki are in talks. Hopefully we will get some better tools for volunteers too and everyone who wants to contribute will find a place to do so in the future.

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32

Oh, I didn’t notice this before. I’m not sure how I feel about the design. I like that everything is on the front page so the community part isn’t as hidden anymore. But I’m not feeling the design itself. It seems less organized and hard to watch. Probably due to the font. The look before was cleaner.
For comparison

33

The problem is that the Help Centre (or Viki Support) started calling itself Community. Well, pardon me, but the Community is here, where the Discussions are.

That other thing there is where the viewers go to complain :wink:

Why is it so hard to connect the viewers to Discussions? Seriously, it shouldn’t be that hard. A button in the Support pages would suffice.

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34

Different people may use words in different ways. If I was unsure and only suggest my opinion I would have used “you could” instead of “you can”.

Anyway if you think someone is wrong and didn’t recently check the guidelines or the drop-down menu of the profile’s report option the easiest way to see the actual version/status of an issue would have been to check that first. This way you’d have seen which topics are part of the menu.

In general an easier access to informations about VIKI’s community related topics would be great instead of the many different sub pages that make it hard to find something sometimes.

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Yes, the Help Center has had a complete overhaul, and now the Community bugs and ideas are on the very bottom of a very long page. A bit difficult to find it if you don’t know.
Here:

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I am really glad to see that Viki has not forgotten what makes Viki …Viki…Happy to hear about the French subs, appreciate the work of those teams as other languages. Hope to hear more about the geo-blocking issue, hopefully that will help viewers and teams that can’t complete projects. I am assuming that for these teams Viki does not take it as going against guidelines but knows that it can’t be completed for obvious reasons. At the moment there is only the coming soon option to check about shows being licensed, it would be great to have a grid with different colour lights(traffic lights) to see the status of different requests. It’s just an idea.

Thank you

Farah

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