Viki is an organization made of people. And people are far from infallible.
We shouldn’t always trust that they know what they’re doing. Because they don’t. They try their best, but don’t know everything. There are things the community knows why they do in a certain way, and only those involved in the process know all the ins and outs.
And especially Viki doesn’t know what happens within private communication between two volunteers.
Additionally, it is highly dangerous to extrapolate that some copied subs mean the user copied all their subs.
This decision was made too rashly and had huge consequences for several projects. So, no, this is not the end.
This situation is very strange indeed, and we all deserve an explanation, and if possible, the identity of the person who did such a thing.
First of all, by my own experience, we all know that when we report anyone we have to mention episode and minute of the evidence we are submitting; Example: Episode 10 minute !2:36 and name of drama where we allege the person/subber has done anything wrong (it could be different reasons why we reported a subber). I used to even submit a screenshot whenever I was allowed to do so.
We all know that the current staff in charge of those things is no longer available in here so I’m shocked such thing could happen now, and that anyone can actually access stuff from volunteers, and delete them ‘‘out of the blue.’’ It’s a more sinister/scary thing because if it happened to nimi_stepinac it can happen to any of us.
Rather than making up excuses for what happened here, we should demand an answer and pronto because we ALL deserve to know how could such a thing happen to a volunteer that has worked so hard for 2 years to make all those subtitles. If is an honest mistake, we can move on, but if this was done out of malice the culprit should be punished and banned from here.
No one should take advantage of any authority/privilege given to them for their own wrong doing.
If this happens to me I would simply quit.
But, if I was the one at fault and they had ample enough evidence against me, of course I would accept the reality of the situation. I wonder though, since we don’t know all sides to this matter, if the user was given any warnings beforehand? Sounds like they didn’t but do we know this for sure?
I don’t know the user, so I’m just looking at it as a bystander. If Viki can keep emailing me about survey’s and such, I’m sure they can notify us when we do something wrong. At least we hope.
Anyone know if they have automated responses or does the staff personally answer us?
Forgot to mention, I have a weird feeling there’s been a lot of bots lately. In the Team discussions, random strange PMs… I wonder if the deletion was a glitch from a bot. Several years back, (and it still happens) sometimes the contribution count isn’t updated accurately. I’m suspecting this could be something similar. A glitch/or bug that “accidentally” deleted subs.
As far as we know user was not given any warning and neither were her CMs, that the most problematic part. And seeing this volunteer has been around for 2 years, i believe reporter also could have reach out to them directly to learn about what happened instead of going behind them and telling people to kick her out of the teams, allegedly.
It could be all handled well if everyone approached the matter maturely i think, Viki staff included. Now its simply sad and left all of us hanging, until we got a reply from @vikicommunity
The consequences of this unfortunate incident have given us here at Viki an opportunity to reevaluate our own moderation processes, and we have already begun working on ways to minimize this from happening in the future. As with most moderation issues/reports, we cannot disclose too much information about the matter outside of the direct people affected due to privacy policies.
What we can share is that what happened was human error by a new member of our moderation team. The correct steps were taken by moderation protocol; however, as the new team member was not as familiar with the system yet, all contributions were accidentally removed during the process. We will be in contact with those impacted with more details as we work toward a resolution.
We apologize for our error and take full responsibility. Our next steps include:
Community Team working with various teams to restore acceptable contributions and ensure it will not negatively impact other aspects including related channels
Reviewing the current moderation process to see what we can improve and prevent the deletion of all contributions instead of only problematic ones
Again, we would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention and vocalizing your care for one another. We are in this together. Viki is working to rectify the situation as quickly as we can, and appreciate your patience as we bring our new staff up to speed.
Finally a clarification, but I do hope Viki treats its volunteers better If they want us of course. I am glad that I am volunteering here and would hate to leave. Viki Volunteers are great.
For Viki’s reference (in case it’s useful information)…
“One The Woman” (South Korean series) was affected by the mass deletion of nimi_stepinac’s subs. When I created an Excel routine to analyze and compare the finalized subs from March 6 against the subs on March 17 after nimi’s were deleted, 486 subs were reverted to earlier, incorrect versions. I have not yet physically checked these subs. I’ve been putting it off in the hope that Viki’s data backup will restore the previous subs.
The number “486” does not represent the total of nimi’s work on this drama. This number relates to those subs that were created by nimi that I did not edit in some small way. Because I did not edit them, these final subs would have been in Nimi’s name and not mine. As a result, their deletion explains the discrepancy in subs between March 6 and March 17. Nimi’s sub tally for this drama would have been considerably higher than 486
As general English editor on “One The Woman,” I am 100% convinced that nimi’s work is authentic. We had many text exchanges as I was trying to determine the best subs for a number of segments. Nimi’s help was always thoughtful, intelligent, and every time, she fully explained the on-screen situation and the dialogue involved. Armed with this information, the final sub that appeared in many of the segments I edited was a joint effort between nimi and me.
This is so ridiculous for it to happen to someone who did such an excellent job in [One The Woman]. I remember that you even mentioned her as the biggest help for you, and I was so pleased with the work done in the drama, and the big difference the drama had when I watched for the second time. They can apologize all they want, but they better make sure they give her all her English subtitles back to her profile page.
They don’t delete the cr*p some people add here as subtitles in the dramas when you report them, and that is why… something doesn’t ‘‘click’’ right with me, and their explanation bc someone was too fast with them fingers.
Yes indeed… @nimi_stepinac did a brilliant job with “One The Woman.” She worked very devotedly and her willingness to help me create the best subs possible was unlimited. I have nothing but praise for her work. I was honestly very grateful to have the opportunity to meet her and to work with her.
I’m so sorry you have to go through this after you worked so hard with the rest of your team to give the best quality editing in that drama. You don’t know how much this has angered me because I know you gave your all to this drama, and you were so proud of the outcome because you deserved to be proud since you made this drama shine so much more from the disaster it was before. If they replace her subs, and left the ones from before, I can see the disaster it went back to, and it’s such a shame.
Personally, I’m very glad to read your response to the community on this matter. Even more so that you did it promptly. Thank you for taking steps to rectify the situation.
As for the new staff, please do not be too harsh on him/her. Since it was an unintentional mistake, and steps are being taken to rectify it, everything will be fine, as far as this matter is concerned.
@nimi_stepinac So glad your grievance is heard, addressed and will be resolved. Keep us posted, if you will.
@padmalayag and Volunteer Community, well done! It’s a promising step forward!
Thank you for your kind words. I’m pretty sure that all the OTW team will appreciate reading them (just like I did)
At the end of the day, it will be fine. Because I have a copy of the final subs, and because I know which ones were changed, I can ‘copy and paste’ and return the subs to what they ended up as. @a_hauth_238 (Channel Manager) will let me know if that needs to be done. In the meantime, Viki may be able to get everything back the way it was. If they cannot, though, the problem will still be able to solved.
However, what you have to tell is what you consider abuse, so that we as the community learn. There are some grey areas here. Some areas which are definitely NOT covered by community guidelines.
If the case here was copying of subs (with permission from the sub owners) from a series to a movie. So, same scenes, just shorter format. As the permission was granted beforehand, is it according to Viki not okay for those subs to be copied?
Let’s take it a bit further. In Chinese dramas there is a song at the beginning and at the end of each episode. With 70-80 episodes sometimes, I would give a task of copying my lyrics to another Viki user who is not proficient in English. I consider this a win-win situation, since they get to contribute, and I can focus on translating the dialogue. According to Viki, is this an infringement on the copyrights, even though I specifically gave my permission?
Finally, if you do decide that this is unacceptable, that we are not allowed to grant others rights to copy our subs, you must not punish us retrogradely. Meaning, you must not delete those subs which were copied before you made this rule.
Section 10, “SUBTITLE SUBMISSION” contains the relevant information.
Given how many BLs have both a series and then a movie created by re-formatting that series, I personally think that it is important that Viki do all they can to help maintain product consistency. Unless I am misunderstanding the above section on “Subtitle Submissions,” the authority to use subs between the various presentation formats of movie versus series belongs to Viki.
It would be interesting to know Viki’s thoughts on copying translations from one format to the other when the scenes and the dialogue are identical for a very large portion of both presentations.
People being credited for the work of others happens all the time with OST lyrics. Using the example that @bozoli mentions… Even though I didn’t do the original formatting or translating, I’ve often copied opening-theme lyrics from Episode 1 to whatever other episodes I worked on in that series. I also get the credit for those lyrics. This is streamlining product completion and maintaining consistency in the lyrics and their presentation. Just imagine if a different translator and different editor were required for each occurrence of the same opening theme for every episode in a 60-episode series. What a nightmare
Well, I’m so happy it got clarified and solution or the fix of error is under way. I just want to say, since human errors are human, no matter how well anyone tries to do their best, error will always happen, even when they should not! As long errors can be admitted and fixed this is how we grow, learn and collaborate together. It is also important to voice out when errors happen in order to find a solution.
To you all, have a wonderful and happy weekend, stay healthy and cheer your loved ones
If this indeed involves copy pasting of 3rd party subs, it doesn’t matter if they are subs from a friend who gave permission to have them added, it should have been discussed with Viki beforehand with prove provided etc. I mean maybe that person also gave his/her subs to the sites that should not be named here and then there might be an issue for Viki because Viki is a legal site.
And when it comes to lyrics in a drama that are copy pasted in all eps where needed, those subs are not 3rd party and done by a team member, copied by an other team member of the same team. That’s how I see it. It becomes abuse when someone copy pastes all subs for an easy route to Viki pass in an other language viki offers when the original subbers are not aware of it.
Aha… I don’t get that format to begin with… first cut a movie into pieces on a channel and make it look like a mini series and then in an other channel glue the pieces together as a movie. Just make up your mind Viki. Is it a movie or a mini series?!
