Oh no! That must be devastating… I had a flooded basement twice, first time on Mother’s Day in 2008 and in 2010 and had to install a pump, but I was in New Hampshire.
I pray for you, that it won’t be too bad… I saw the weather channel recently and some area is all water Good luck an be safe!
Well, that was my cat in his younger years and sadly I lost him due to illness in 2012. I thought he was close to Maine Coon but he was a red taby…the vet said. I still miss him to this day… We picked him up when he was about a year old from a family, they said they found him in the woods… He was a free cat bringing me mice, he’d run when called upon or whistling… he loved playing with the fur mice too Maine Coon are so beautiful.
Okay, that’s good to know.
I will if something comes up… I won’t be as busy as I used to though.
Developing stronger links. Yes, sure, that’s awesome, but how? Apart from listening to us and being friendly, is there anything you can actually do as our representative? Your predecessor said, in an interview, that it was frustrating because, although she was aware of the issues, she could do nothing about them.
The management has been properly informed of our suggestions about making the whole experience better, we even had a series of live chats on Skype back in 2019, with many promises which remained just that, promises. Then they went ahead and changed lots of things we hadn’t asked for, and almost nothing from what we had asked. And the things we suggested weren’t for our personal benefit, mind you (what personal benefit? We’re volunteers!) but to streamline the whole process, make things easier both for viewers and for us, with the ultimate goal of Viki becoming better, stronger. Many of us have been sorely disappointed and disillusioned, and some of the best of us have started abandoning the ship. You should be made aware of this, and there are many threads here on Discussions one could read. But it would take too much time.
You can see a summary of the problems and suggestions in this document. Although it was compiled by me, these problems and solutions do not come from me only, they come from endless discussions among us, so they may work as a good overview of what is bothering the community. Request list - changes I'd like to see on viki - Google Docs
I know it can be overwhelming for someone who is not familiar with the ins-and-outs of the volunteer experience here. But some things, like for instance the inadequacy of the inbox, the project finder and the volunteer finder, jump to the eye even to a first-time user of the website.
A very small world indeed, @maria_lavendula_77 ! It looks like Boxholm is directly east from Gothenburg where my husband is from. I would love to visit one day. Cheese is a definitely a weakness of mine!!
You’ve been so sweet and wonderful. Thank you! I’m really having fun getting to know everyone here and it continues!
Hi @zyxw - Thanks for asking! I’m particularly interested to hear if you have any community initiative ideas that could help members connect with other members - or connect them to the purpose of contributing. I’m still getting up to speed on everything Viki so apologies in advance if I’m unable to zero in on something specific!
Thank you for your prayers, @simi11! I’m watching the news now and the storm just got upgraded to a higher level. We have tarped our entire front and back yards and have our portable sump pumps and wet vacs ready so whatever comes we will be ready for it!
I’m so so sorry to hear you lost your red taby in 2012. How incredible that he was originally found him in the woods! Sounds like he didn’t lose his hunting instincts! One of my cats likes to bring me those type of presents as well! I have a very patient husband who then has to catch them and release them in a field by our house.
Hi @irmar. thank you for your note! i’m sure it wasn’t the most fun having to share this part of viki history with me. i appreciate the candidness and look forward to setting some time aside so i can familiarize myself with your list.
i’ve been on every side of this situation - as a customer requesting items, as the community team advocating for our members, and as the product team listening to both the customer and the company. i can share that there’s frustration and disappointment no matter where you land and as despite the best intentions, things are never quite as simple or straighforward as one hopes… especially here in tech!!!
all this said, one small way we can start improving on the situation is in how we communicate with you. this means collaborating with our fellow teams to inform you in advance of a feature, functionality or change that you might be impacted by, provide you with insight into why an item was chosen (perhaps over something else), give you more context as to why that solution was chosen (maybe the other solution would have caused X to break), allow you to submit feedback on an iteration, and sharing quickly if/when something goes wrong.
i know it’s going to take time and work to repair past hurts and there will be bumpy times for sure! i just want you to know that i don’t take what you’ve expressed lightly and will do the best by this amazing community. thank you for listening!
Precisely this part here was forbidden a few years back, when the volunteer community was even specifically told not to guess or speculate about anything newly decided by Viki. Since all of us here are known to be meek and never complain, you may guess how that “policy” was recieved.
I will indeed be surprised if any of this materializes, but in the closing days of actual volunteers here, perhaps this is the last flare of light before the end.
We are not merely “contributors” but VOLUNTEERS, erased intentionally from view and now in the shadows consigned to correcting rubbish bought from or done by others in some cases without the sense to even LOOK at the drama in its context OR THE NAMES when given. Speed is now the entire story over quality, and the front page today is not a drama but a modern pay to view movie.
Too much ground has been lost, this is the final part before we die on the final hill with our captains around us…having fought the empire and lost. The feel to things lately is indeed that of Gye Baek. Or of the Spartans, and their allies against the Persian Empire.
I wish BrendaS the best of luck here in her new career. I wish to thank the amazing community of volunteers for their perseverance and pursuit of quality in a world that eschews artisan work for cheap copies.
May I suggest a feature to watch Viki on 1.25x, 1.5x and 2x speed? Netflix let us watch on 1.25x and 1.5x. That’s more drama episodes we can fit in and watch in a day.
oh gosh, @maria_lavendula_77 ! thank YOU for being so lovely and wonderful!!
i must confess that it’s a little daunting coming in as newbie! however the generosity of spirit and warmth from you and this community has made the transition a truly amazing one. i look forward to hearing from you again!!
hey, @bozoli. i don’t think anyone can stop someone from being curious - it’s human nature after all! i do understand how one might react if they were told to stop.
hi, @deadliftdiva_548 . i truly appreciate the warm wishes. i’ve only been here a blip compared to you and so many others but i hope you see what an special community this still is. i can’t think of any other place where members have developed such truly unique skills through their shared love of asian entertainment while building connections with others from almost every corner of the world(!!!)
i hope you will find your way back one day. until then, sending you the best of luck and good wishes. be well!
[quote=“brendas, post:34, topic:48018”]
this means collaborating with our fellow teams to inform you in advance of a feature, functionality or change that you might be impacted by, provide you with insight into why an item was chosen (perhaps over something else), give you more context as to why that solution was chosen (maybe the other solution would have caused X to break), allow you to submit feedback on an iteration, and sharing quickly if/when something goes wrong.[/quote]
viki started out as an experiment in “crowd sourced subtitling”. From the very start in 2008, the non-producing audience started whining about the speed of subtitling. In the early days, viewers waited days, weeks or months, until there were enough competent subbers working on a title for nearly completely subbed episodes. As viki became more popular and more volunteers learned about the fun of subbing, the wait for subtitles dropped to a matter of about day to sometimes 3-4 hours for complete subbing of an episode. This drop in the wait time did not stop the whining.
The paying customer complained and threatened to leave to another site with instantaneous subbing. If the customer is in the Americas and the content owner is not a member of the Kocowa consortium which provides it’s own English, Spanish, and Portuguese subtites, there seems to be no other subscription streaming site with a variety of immediately available subtitled current Korean drama. So if the customer complains, so what? Viu produces English content rapidly but is not available in the Americas! Pirate sites which are free and available globally take their content from Viu as well as the Kocowa members and from viki. Nevertheless, afraid of losing the whiner’s subscription fees, viki adopted the policy of pre-subbing of all new to viki Korean dramas.
Nearly simultaneously, apparently because editing of English is seen as an obstacle to rapid subbing in languages other than English, channel managers are told the the subtitles may not be edited or that the subtitles have already been edited. To heck with quality control.
The “no editing” is like the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Rather than bear any implied criticism when a pre-subbed subtitle is edited, viki simply informs the channel manager that no editing of English is allowed/required as “the staff will do it.”
I don’t think there was any collaboration with any volunteer, much less any advance notice regarding the decision and the reasons for it that all on-air K drama and old titles new to viki would be subbed and segmented by viki paid subbers or the content provider’s subtitlers so that no volunteer was needed to sub from Korean to English. Nor was there any collaboration which led to the decision to inform channel managers that paid subtitlers would edit their own work. Impact of the decisions. These decisions make it nearly impossible for new volunteers who wish to subtitle from Korean to English to become QCs because there is nothing for them to do or for existing QCs to renew. The decision increased the difficulty of segmenters to become QC or to renew their status.
There has been no official statement of the policies. We have learned of the policy when newly appointed channel managers are told the content is “pre-subbed” and in increasingly more often cases, no editing of English will be allowed.
I’ve noticed @mirjam_465 reply to a post in the Segue Cafe is the same. They may have been affected by the updates to Discussions in February.
Many post, pre-update, that has links such as gifts, or videos, are now not visible. Maybe because they were wrapped upon input, such as, not entering on a separate line. At any rate, this occurred after the February update to Discussions specifically.
@irmar
I didn’t format my post not to wrap properly. When I created the post it looked fine in the draft but as soon as I posted it, part of it wrapped and part of it didn’t. I must have hit some secret html key combination to cause that to happen.
When I removed the rest of Brendas’ thread with deadlift diva, which I didn’t ever intend to include in my post, my post magically wrapped.
Format didn’t stop me reading it, where there’s a will, there’s a way… except in fighting someone larger than we volunteers are.
I think I should take this moment to say thank you, Connie, for all your hard work and to the brilliant volunteers of the Korean language side for the long years I have spent watching in awe great dramas with great translations and attention that great dramas really deserve. I have spent my time except for a couple projects on the Chinese to English front here, but still enjoy what are definitely still volunteer work…and clearly not the work of machines.
My respects, always.
Diva
and now to return to not reading discussions again…
Maine Coon are so beautiful.
We have tarped our entire front and back yards and have our portable sump pumps and wet vacs ready so whatever comes we will be ready for it! 
How incredible that he was originally found him in the woods! Sounds like he didn’t lose his hunting instincts! One of my cats likes to bring me those type of presents as well! I have a very patient husband who then has to catch them and release them in a field by our house. 
