I think I’ve messaged you about the server few days ago, I agree that theres some prejudice about this for unknown reasons, maybe its for the reasons we talked about above. Still, just after sharing this post we got couple people interested in (i was not even expecting that much lol) and my language team also planning to get in soon.
You still got the hope? If so please come in, be my guest, be our discord admin too
Jokes aside, i think it will kinda have a snowball effect once people from different language pairs join,and tbh new users seem to be into this idea since they also find Viki’s communication side confusing as well. Lets see what happens, good luck to us all
update: people slowly started to join and I’m quite happy! If you are reading this, come take a look guys! Dm me here or on Discord for any questions you got!
update: We have reached over 60+ people in such short time It is amazing to see new&old members of the community come together to help each other. If you still havent give it a chance, please try&do so! (this community is to help one another, finding teams and anything to make subtitling on viki easier while letting the community engage in peace, using in time chat. )
Splitting the international Viki Community into multiple personal Discord servers appears quite contraproductive for me. Recently it seems that non-volunteers who don’t know anybody / the work proceess of Viki’s Volunteering Community feel the need to open own personal Discord servers all the time.
Edit/PS:
The other Viki Discord server (that vivi posted) already has over 100 members, including most members someone who’s longer active in this community (as volunteer and in discussions) would know.
Hi there! Seems like you didnt get whats the purpose of these servers exactly are. Drama Lovers server, (whos owner and I are in touch and modding each others servers too) is a server for watch parties and social aspects of the community, for the audience, who like to watch the content on Viki.
The server I own is solely for volunteer tools&topics related. Newbies get to ask questions, and everyone in general help each other about how to subtitle on Viki, without any other distraction. @vivi_1485 is quite lovely person and she has been in both servers and is aware of both server’s purpose.
p.s: I am an active volunteer myself, in case you did not bother to look into my profile, and the server I’ve created is not a personal server either. As i stated, it is to make communication easier for volunteers, and it has been working perfectly fine, so far we got 69 members, and we direct people to Drama Lovers server if they are looking for a social sort of community. I dont mind the numbers as long as I get to help people, we helped people find teams and helped CM/Mods to find team members in this server while senior volunteers helping new volunteers, and even if it helped 1 person only, that would mean a lot to me I’d love to host you in my server if you would like to take a look before setting your mind: https://discord.com/invite/SuEUz4Qb87
I think I was on your server at the beginning but it didn’t appear useful somehow, maybe that’s different now (since time has passed).
In which aspects do you think an international volunteer only server is more helpful than Viki’s discussion board here?
I’m asking because I think that many languages already have their OL community message tools, e.g. my language is using two different message systems, some people use both, some just one of it.
Or is your idea mainly focused on the workflow between CM-segmenters-English subbers and OL mods?
Thank you for your reply, you got a point because my server is fairly new and working on it solo takes some time, so it was still in building progress until recently(exams and subtitling took most of my time lel)
I think I’ve tried to explain it but, i think discord is more useful for its tools and functions as well as in-time chat, compared to discussions. It allows you to notify members too so can grant you quick response.
My idea is to focus on the workflow between CM-segmenters-English subbers and OL mods mainly but also if a Language team wants so, we create private rooms for them too. Also its now easy to recruit team members and also newbies find it much easier to find projects thru discord than thru viki(i was lost when i first started lol) this may also be good to differ rookies from fake account when we recruit teammates.
I think you may also saw it in Drama Lovers, theres vc and share screen options so segmenting and subtitling mentors get a place to teach by sharing screens with their students in private rooms.
Hope it clarified it a little. Have a great one too!
I think its really useful for teaching. Everything is right where you want it. As for the volunteer process… i dont know if it’s feasible to move an entire team there because we have a wide range of ages working with us(took me quite a while to get used to the platform - i felt like a lost little rabbit for a few weeks after joining even though I usually get the hang of most sites in a day or two), and not everyone wants to create a Discord account. I won’t think of it as a place we all have to shift to, more as a useful option when considering where to host our team chats.
I also think it’s best for picking newbies because you can gain an understanding of whether they’re ready for a certain job by engaging in conversation with them.
I don’t know which message tools the OL teams are using. I think some use Skype, some Discord, some WhatsApp? Who knows…
So my impression of past years was that the biggest issue for beginners has been the question how to get in touch with moderators because not everyone finds the way to discussion board and I don’t see how an inofficial message app could solve this problem.
Other communities, including game studios, are way better in providing informations even when most gamers might be more used to find necessary informations than someone who’s just into watching dramas and maybe doesn’t even know at the beginning that Viki is fan translated.
If the project finder tool would give information and direct links to helpful threads and Viki guidelines or even Discord community servers, that’ll be a great option. I think some years ago the volunteers suggested that. I guess the project finder is still very similar to the past (besides the option that mods now can disable their projects from being listed).
I think the entire problem is the stupid Project Finder. Instead of asking everyone to hide their teams, they could have removed all projects and just kept the On-Air ones. CMs who needed volunteers could have done things the old way and finished the non-On Air projects. That way, we could start fresh and not have old or abandoned projects clogging up the PF.
I agree that they should provide links to Discussions too… but i think that option is there in the Contributor Community menu. Objectively speaking, it’s not very hard to get in touch with a mod. You can do that straight from a channel page’s Subtitle Team, too. Isn’t that how complainers end up in everyone’s inboxes? However, I do agree that Viki needs to do something about breaking the wall between the volunteers and newbie viewers. Changing the tagline from “Global community powered by fans” to “The heart of Asian entertainment” was a pretty stupid decision, in my opinion. I got curious about volunteering after seeing that.
I think Discord is better than WhatsApp and some other sites because you don’t have to share your personal phone number.
I’m back! As I’ve always been a supporter of change for the better, I think that in terms of communication platform, Viki has fallen behind.
I’m glad to see that after me there were more determined volunteers who persisted in creating a Discord server (Viki, are you here? Discord is the perfect tool that is not only used in gaming anymore. So maybe follow up on our idea).
To the rest of the community, which is sceptical about taking a new approach, I recommend that you give the two Discord servers a try, especially the one for the volunteer community. We have already started to gather more and more people and you will certainly have the support you need to learn how to use Discord, which is by far more in line with our work and the year we live in, 2022. Refreshing the webpage to see new messages seems unthinkable to me. I don’t know what Viki’s IT department is doing.
Personally, I updated my Viki profile and included the two servers with links to them. If you want to support these servers, I recommend you do the same.
Life is about trying and discovering new things, why not apply that here? It costs us nothing.
I personally don’t feel good about this either… although our German community uses Kakao Talk for Project Announcements and volunteers seeking projects including a chat for each project and there is Viki/News, it’s for faster communication since the mailsystem here isn’t that great. I believe there is also Googlechat or something for the English teams, perhaps not all. This is just enough to keep pace, but another platform for volunteers and newbies feels somewhat risky as not all volunteers and newbies will get the same information… it looks indeed like a division…
The numbers that are there says really nothing.
It should also be noted that the “Viki contributors community” on Discord you created should be labeled as Unofficial since Viki has no part of it, it could confuse Newbies and other volunteers…
IDK why you seem too serious&negative about it, as it was explained on a previous post there is no splitting the community, its the opposite. You cant go around and ask people who create watch party thru Viki, Netflix and etc and have social chats what they are doing? Its not my business nor yours, i dont think anyone got a say if someone wants to socialise, which is what Drama Lovers server is for.
I personally find Discord much useful and seems like there are 120 other people thinking this way…Nobody forces any teammates to join and use discord, its simply makes the lives easier, like for example our Segmenter Sensei’s been telling they think it makes their job easier to teach their students. I dont think there is any information newbies or volunteers are getting when they join Viki. Many of us were lost and didnt know how to contact people to volunteer. Now we got a platform to help one another and explain things better. Like…we all admit Viki inbox is not useful a bit. German community must have thought so too, so that they created Kakao Talk, but Discord is just more useful for group projects. As I said, its only open to those who wants to join haha.
Numbers does not matter as I said, even helping one person is good enough for me. But it does say something that we had 60 people 3-4 days ago and now we got 120. People seem to find it helpful so they invite their fellow volunteers.
Viki Volunteer Community is not official already. Its a community…not an official organisation. I’ve read Viki regulations and ToS and our server does not do anything against it, name included. Thank you for your concern. It would help if you could break your prejudice and spread less negativity…Also there is no official Viki server anyway so what is there to be confused lol
I was sceptical about Discord just as you. But so many things changed my mind.
The beauty of Discord is that it has everything you need all in one place. It is Discussions, Chat, Watch Party, Video tutorials, and Skype/Zoom all in one. Depending of the needs of a community, Discord can be tailored in almost any way possible.
Yes, I agree, we should perhaps consider adding the word “unofficial” in the title of that server. But as some have already said, there is nothing official or unofficial about any community anywhere. We as Viki community do not belong to Rakuten Viki as a company. We have the right to self-determination and self-organization.
"Hi guys, hope you are all fine! I thought it may be nice to sum up all the updates happen during a week every Saturday!"
-There were many suggestions for language RSS, so we put up a #language-learning-resources room for anyone interested in.
-Added 3 new "Content From" countries and more languages in #roles & their respective general rooms, do not hesitate to ask for your language role if its not available yet
-Created a room for our #volunteer-podcast you can check the channel to see some of our volunteers organising a nice thing there!
[: We got a new channel for CM or Mods who want a private category for their active teams. For more detailed info please check the image (click on it and click to "see original" to see full sized image). #team-channel-request-from
Our member count went from 60-ish to 130 this week. Thank you all for making that happen and inviting people! You can invite your current teams, comment and increase the activity of our post on discussions to help us reach out to more volunteers!
"And finally...I know some of you are familiar with discord and some are not, as we grow in numbers we believe we will eventually require mode Discord Mods to be able to take care of the server properly. After I am done with all the paperwork and stuff Im currently busy with i will offer help to those who would want to learn discord and discord modding better, so let me know if you are interested in that too!
It is amazing to see new&old members of the community come together to help each other. If you still havent give it a chance, please try&do so! (this community is to help one another, finding teams and anything to make subtitling on viki easier while letting the community engage in peace, using in time chat. )
I’d love to host you in my server if you would like to take a look before setting your mind: 
