Here is your problem (not volunteers one)
Info: I think they blame viki and its management, more than volunteers 
And personally, I feel the pressure more from you, vikistaff members, than from the viewers.
Your magic solution:
I think everyone has told you guys the positive and negative points of such a decision. I also think everyone has said why there is this amount of time, namely: English teams, volunteering, lack of qualified English volunteers. Why? For quality and accuracy. Why? For the benefit of viewers and understanding. A paid site must ensure quality, otherwise why pay?
In this community, we are 3 (Big Three V):
- Volunteers
- Viewers
- Vikistaff members
If there was a viki ethic, it would be to come up with ideas, change systems and reorganize for: the BEST of everyone (Volunteers, Viewers, Vikistaff members). And I repeat, I speak of the BEST to suit everyone, not necessarily “good”.
What is best for everyone? If we read volunteers messages, we can note that this idea is not the best for them. If we asked the viewers’ opinion, we would certainly have some interesting answers with yes and no (some answers that we can find in the following documents where the viewers had said that they did not want a machine-generated translation when we had the problem of vikibot a few months ago : Machine translation from Viki + the google doc petition, @kylamia can you give us the google document please? You are the owner). Btw, why don’t you do a survey for viewers? Ask them! But ok, let’s say a 50/50%… (I’m optimistic, I know)
I guess viki staff members are also supposed to be people who promote the well-being of volunteers and viewers. Of course, pressure from top executives also has its weight, but we are not here in the “best”, nor even of ethics or professional conscience. If we all listened to what the morons who rule us say and without making our voices heard, we would be screwed. Let’s go dig our hole immediately!
Staff members: ask yourself the right questions. By the way: would you, as a person, pay for a plateform with machine translations? (Yes, auto-translated subs and vikibot is the same, it’s not human)
We told you guys:
- What’s the problem: in english teams, sometimes because of some volunteers that we report (and you guys need to do your job here).
- We offered you more logical solutions : see above all answers.
- If you guys don’t listen and cannot take a step aside for the better overall, we will be forced to note that: you don’t listen us, you absolutely want to use these translation machines not to help us but for other reasons. But what can we do? That’s your job, not ours. If you are under pressure from above, you should consider educating them on things and explaining to them why this is not possible or why it is possible. If not, please think about other possibilities.
I think it’s general: we want to do the best for viki: for the viewers, for the staff members and for us. Do you, as vikistaff members, want to do the best for everyone?
PS : I don’t know if I said everything I wanted to say, if I made myself clear, but hey, I said my little piece of thought.
Oh, and thanks for writing here before you act. Thanks for considering us this time. We see that you want to share more, I hope that will continue. On this one, we owe you congratulations and thanks. 