I’m really thunderstrucked and speechless. Viki has deleted almost all of my channels, even for upcoming dramas. Only the licensed ones remained.
I had teams, I had coverpages - all vanished in a blink of the eye. Could any please explain what is happening?
I’m speechless as well. I’d really like to know what Viki’s reason for deleting all those perfectly fine fan channels for upcoming dramas is. I can’t think of any.
I don’t even want to think about all those many hours I spent on those channels putting teams together in case we’d get a license later, uploading coverpages, searching for the newest trailers, posters and stills to post them in the comments section, promoting them in general, all just so that Viki would delete everything again later. I’m really dumbfounded.
You may notice that I did ask the question about the pending channels and pointed out this very thing - that cover pages and teams might want to be backed up in case we actually had a chance to use or reuse artwork.
Stony silence here and by PM, I never did get an answer. Apparently the silence and the deletion was the “answer”.
What a great pity that they chose to NOT COMMUNICATE except by way of shock and awe. More…shock and awe. The opportunity and volunteers they lose by this will possibly eventually take a toll. Or perhaps this too is in the plans?
the nameless vast sky of unknown and future await…
The Fan Channels are gone now but NOT FORGOTTEN.
It must mean that they weren’t able to secure a licence, no? In that case it’s natural they deleted them.
Channels for upcoming dramas are gone. Deleted. Although Viki told us in the FAQs for the new channel system, that they will keep those approved channels. Only those remained, which were created by Viki.
Each month Viki is tightening the belt one more notch… without being more transparent, changing the fun on Viki. Viki’s FAQs here, I just copy/pasted I don’t have time to do else:
I have a current, “live” Fan Channel on Viki. What will happen to this Channel?
Kristine - April 28, 2017 14:20
All current Fan Channels, including any current channel team members, will remain on Viki.
I previously submitted Fan Channels on Viki. What will happen to these submissions?
Kristine - May 22, 2017 23:53
For streamlining purposes, all users will need to apply to the newly created channels, including users who may have submitted channels previously. All channels that have not been approved as of today will be deleted.
I wonder where the confusion is of definition of “FAN CHANNELS”… and “live” means pending, licensend or ?? so far I understand a licensed channel doesn’t fall under “Fan Channel”… someone please correct me 
That they even deleted channels for upcoming drama is just…
Th only positive thing: My channelroles is finally more clean, I had so many pending channels and asked Viki I don’t know how many times to approve or deny those so they don’t remain in my channel roles and people remain to ask for positions…
But they also removed my pending CITT movie channel… uhhh I guess Viki isn’t planning to get a license for it then…
I guess it gets weirdier and oddier with every move we are currently experiencing. I assumed the content of the channels will be deleted since this is the main problem of the copyrighting/license issues and that the bare channels will be left, accordingly to the message we have all received that the “library” and “approved” channels (even if they are fan channels) will stay.
I do not really mind being deprived of Korean dramas (as I do not work with in them anymore) so I kept silent through the KOCOWA discussion, but I guess my team did its best to deliver great subtitles in many Chinese dramas, so deleting all our “chances” to actually get the drama we wanted to work on when it would be finally licensed is like a slap in the face. I do not care for idol dramas so all those fluffy web dramas were always safe from me, but I really did like to work in period and historical dramas that nobody else seemed to care about so there was really a very low risk of a catfight with another CM for the rights to the channel.
The only explanation for the recent move would be that Viki/Rakuten does not want to confuse its “paying” customers with channels that are “blank” and being accused of “cheating” people off their money since they could be interested in watching a series that is not licensed, but it does not justify how this move was done and why were we not informed correctly about it.
Unless of course the experienced subbers and segmenters are not longer needed/wanted here, because this is exactly the feeling we recently get. The channels are being given away so randomly that the new CM rules set up by Viki are no longer applying, the choice of Chinese content that was being purchased is in many ways very questionable (Eternal Love vs Lost Love in Time, Rakshasa Street vs Wuxin 2) and many times the licenses double here and on DF channel. The qualitative segmenting and subbing is no longer promoted and no longer respected on many channels and the new Vikians are being roped into blitz subbing through a subbathon rather than through the thoughtful training so they can last over their mandatory 3000 subs to get the QC status.
I would advise all “old souls”, lone wolves of segmenting, power subbers and all those great Vikians I loved and still love to work with to actually take a step back and look at the whole picture. I am really amazed how many of you are taking everything that is happening as something obvious and normal and even aceptable/desirable. Sometimes making a comparison on how much one actually invests in Viki and how much one actually gets back is a real eye opener.
I really wish they weren’t deleting them. I go to them for the licensing requests, its how I keep up on/keep track of what I want to request for viki to get. I do that every other day. Now this makes it harder to do.
But…
if - it’s only a guess, but you must admit it’s likely - they have tried getting licenses for them but haven’t been able to for some reason (the competitor bidding more or something like that), and there is no chance that they will get licensed soon, doesn’t it make sense to get them out of the way, instead of letting them stay here needlessly? Something like decluttering, house-cleaning. Why make people ask for them, and raise their hopes, if viki know there is no possibility of them coming here?
Because I’m not an experienced channel manager and most of my approved channels never got licensed my channelrole is more than clean. I have left 5 channels, 2 of them licensed and completed, the other 3 will probably vanish within the next days. Although I often asked Viki, to delete my not approved channels, I didn’t meant they should delete all channels. I’m so disappointed and mad…
Question into the round here … You did get the mail from Viki about fan channels getting deleted, right?
Or, not?
Honestly I can take the changes of Viki, because I am not as commited as I was in my early years at Viki. It was about 4 years ago, when the changes at Viki made me take a break for several months and I only came back for the people I met on the platform.
Including channels for upcoming dramas late in 2017 and early in 2018?
I’m only guessing here, but yes, why not? Probably the talks and negotiations start months before airing. Maybe some other streaming site got them, or they were too expensive, or…
I guess since they are using their system of channel approvement now. One way system no exception …
You talk about the system with those FAQs??
Btw. a bit out of context - Viki Project Finder, especially for channel manager did not work for me since weeks. But today I tried and … Drumrolls!!!
There is a lot of stuff from Indonesia and Bangladesh, India and Venezuela and even the US and other countries.
@somejuwels Since that answer by Kristine was written back in April 2017, we should take into consideration the new general PM we’ve received five days ago (August 22, 2017) from Viki to all CMs that fan channels are going to be deleted between August 28-31, 2017.
Therefore, any old Fan Channels not created by Viki will be gone later this week. It seems every answer by Viki is time-sensitive. So what applied 4 months ago does not apply today.
That’s right, I got this message, too. But I’ve got such a message before and only older fan channels with videos have been deleted.
In this case right now, Viki has not mentioned, that ALL fan channels would be deleted, even the upcoming ones. I could understand, that those fan channels, which never got a license would be deleted, but even upcoming ones? It would have been right and respectful towards the channel managers, to inform them that all fan channels will be deleted.
@somejuwels It was actually expected that all Fan Channels would disappear from Viki. Around 2014, there were significant issues with uploading unlicensed material onto the channels, only Youtube and Dailymotion were the remaining two sources allowed on Viki. Back then, we often had to replace missing video and losing the work of the volunteers. Then several months ago, they removed all videos or prevented videos from playing on Fan Channels, making them useless despite being there.
I understand everyone’s frustration, but there are significant copyright issues when Viki are allowing volunteers to subtitle shows that are not licensed or have an expired license. Which was why they have decided to delete all fan channels to not have false hopes of licensing something. Only when they have secured the license on certain material did they recreate a channel for it. This action is similar to Youtube removing videos from your account when you have uploaded material that have infringed copyright or someone has filed a claim against it. At least Viki doesn’t have warnings or account termination like Youtube does.
I feel sorry for all volunteers who work on Fan Channels and are negatively affected by this incident.