Fansub Preference: Leader or Staff?

[Access]

Originally Posted by pichu

nope, 10 years of experience does not imply to be better than someone with only 3 years of experience. The fact is if your idea is old and outdated, you should be changed.

Yes and no. The tools and techniques used for digisubbing have changed so much in the last 8-or-so years that someone who does not stay current can easily fall behind. For instance Nandub was a great tool for it's time but nobody would try to use that today. But, doing something for a long time can bring about a sense of perspective, about what is important, what isn't, what works in the long term, what is sustainable compared to what is likely to burn out in a few months. Likewise, someone who has been around a long time probably has a larger network of friends to rely on or call upon when they decide to do something. Someone who has seen first-hand the rise and fall of groups can better choose which groups to be, or stay, a part of, and will have a better chance at sucess in this way also.

[日本ひきこもり協会]

Originally Posted by Access

Yes and no. The tools and techniques used for digisubbing have changed so much in the last 8-or-so years that someone who does not stay current can easily fall behind. For instance Nandub was a great tool for it's time but nobody would try to use that today. But, doing something for a long time can bring about a sense of perspective, about what is important, what isn't, what works in the long term, what is sustainable compared to what is likely to burn out in a few months. Likewise, someone who has been around a long time probably has a larger network of friends to rely on or call upon when they decide to do something. Someone who has seen first-hand the rise and fall of groups can better choose which groups to be, or stay, a part of, and will have a better chance at sucess in this way also.

I'll disagree there. After fansubbing for a few years it's like hitting level 99. There's literally no difference between 3 years of experience and 10 years. As you said it's all about staying up-to-date. For example I timed anime years ago and still time episodes once in a while however I know people who can time much faster than me.

Originally Posted by Tofusensei

My point was it wasn't a half-ass job. They disagreed with the choice of music for the intro and wanted it redone to change that. The video was synched to the audio so it was asking for a complete redo.

That's called democracy. I know people who typeset and have terrible artistic sense and if the rest says it sucks then it usually sucks, despite that you think it fits perfectly.

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by 日本ひきこもり協会

That's called democracy. I know people who typeset and have terrible artistic sense and if the rest says it sucks then it usually sucks, despite that you think it fits perfectly.

So you're saying that one person's artistic sense is automatically superior to someone else's because they are higher in the group's hierarchy? I fail to see how one person having 100% veto rights without having to consult with anyone else is a democracy, but I digress ^^;

Our fansub group internal priorities are obviously different. I value having fun over quality, it appears you don't. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

If you consistently belittle your staff below you under the guise of 'quality' you will alienate your staff quickly. As a leader, sometimes it's better for the long-term stability of the group to take a slight hit on your opinion of 'quality' in order to foster positive attachment to the group and give a much needed self-esteem boost to a junior staff member. Who knows, they might even surprise you one day! The best managers in the world surround themselves with people more talented/smarter than they are and learn to trust their opinions. Letting your own preconceptions of what something should look like/sound like/be worded as/etc. override others' opinions all the time is doing your group a disservice in the long run. The superstars of tomorrow are the junior staff of today. If one of your junior staff members gets frustrated over having to redo his work all the time because of an arbitrary definition of 'quality' and leaves to go to another group where they become a superstar translator, did you do your group a service by making them redo their work all the time? Wouldn't you rather this person ends up in your group translating 5 shows a week like crustol and not with the competition? But because quality trumps having fun, you lost him to another group. (NOTE: All this assumes the work was done to the best of his ability in good faith).

All this assumes that you hire competent staff in the first place. Of course if the person has no taste whatsoever they shouldn't have been brought on as a typesetter in the first place.

Let's take the example of having one staff member who has veto rights on all aspects of all projects, all in the name of quality. Let's say this person is a superstar who genuinely does have superior knowledge of every aspect of the fansub process, including translation, than every other group member. In this case, some might say it'd be best to let this person give orders and make people redo things (or redo them himself) if they are not up to his quality level. Sounds like a good plan, right? I mean, quality is the most important thing, right?

I'm going to argue that it's not. Here are my reasons why:

#1- People inevitably want to move up in an organization and take on roles with more responsibility and power. The upward mobility in this group will be highly limited. This will lower morale and lead to higher turnover and loss of talent.

#2- You need your staff members to develop some leadership skills and the ability to work independently. Lord knows fansubbers go AWOL all the time and for the long-term survival of the group, other people need to have knowledge and experience of the entire process from the top down. God forbid this superstar staff member were to get hit by a truck and die. What would happen to the group if no one else has ever managed many aspects of the process, including distro?

#3- You would be severely limiting the scalability of the group by making this person review all projects. There are only so many hours in the day. In the name of allowing the group to take on more projects and arguably have more fun doing so, some quality needs to be sacrificed.

Putting quality over fun on the list of priorities works in the short term. It does NOT work in the long term. By fostering the growth of a core group of talent with sufficient buy-in into the organization, you'll turn into a dynamic, successful, stable group with many redundant points of failure. This is management theory 101, guys.

This is the main difference between groups that fail and groups that stand the test of time. You can swap in the word "speed" for "quality" as well and it all holds true. The #1 priority for any group should be to have fun. If you are having fun, speed and quality will come along for the ride.

-Tofu

[Access]

Originally Posted by 日本ひきこもり協会

I'll disagree there. After fansubbing for a few years it's like hitting level 99. There's literally no difference between 3 years of experience and 10 years. As you said it's all about staying up-to-date. For example I timed anime years ago and still time episodes once in a while however I know people who can time much faster than me.

That's called democracy. I know people who typeset and have terrible artistic sense and if the rest says it sucks then it usually sucks, despite that you think it fits perfectly.

With the first part, how are you disagreeing with what I said? My point was just that task-ability is one thing while network(ing), experience, and perspective never really 'maxes out' unless the person lets it.

And most groups today do not have 'democracy' in the practiced sense, they are driven to release. Today, fighting something can't just mean saying "It's not good enough", you have to put up some constructive criticism, be willing to help, or even fix it up yourself. That takes some work, and most people have a 'hands-off' attitude with things they did not directly have some part in. In this way, 80% of the group can think something isn't up to their personal standard, and yet it can still get released.

For example I remember trying to fight Karaoke effects when they first came out in one of my shows. It was a really short conversation, it went something like me saying "We don't need this... I'm going to take it out..."; and then the person who did it said something like "But I already did it...", so, it stayed in and we moved on. That's kinda how decisions are made irl, it's not like you get everyone together and do a vote. You just do what's most convenient for the couple of people who are actually involved in creating / releasing it.

[digiboy123]

I personally prefer being part of the staff. Don't want all the leader duties.

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by 日本ひきこもり協会

I'll disagree there. After fansubbing for a few years it's like hitting level 99. There's literally no difference between 3 years of experience and 10 years. As you said it's all about staying up-to-date. For example I timed anime years ago and still time episodes once in a while however I know people who can time much faster than me.


That's called democracy. I know people who typeset and have terrible artistic sense and if the rest says it sucks then it usually sucks, despite that you think it fits perfectly.

I'm gunna have to say this is pretty much wrong. Saying that after 3 years you stop growing as a subber is fairly ignorant imo. To this day I continue to learn more and develop new ways of doing things based off of my past experience. And there are a lot of things older subbers know how to do that the newer guys are totally clueless on since it was a "had to be there" type of thing. If you think growth of ability and technique stops at some point you are sorely mistaken.

[Tofusensei]

Well the obvious argument against what he suggested is translation. Ask any professional translator. 5, 10, 20 years into your career and you're still learning new things. That's not even factoring in the soft skills that Access was mentioning.

-Tofu

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by Tofusensei

Well the obvious argument against what he suggested is translation. Ask any professional translator. 5, 10, 20 years into your career and you're still learning new things. That's not even factoring in the soft skills that Access was mentioning.

-Tofu

It applies to everything really. When you look at who sets the standards in subbing that everyone follows its the old farts for the most part. Even speed subbing was something some older people did.

[Emess]

I'm all for the way my group works. There is no leader however each project is generally managed by someone. We do whatever it is that someone wants to do assuming others are interested and its up to them to keep it going. I tend to manage the majority of things although thats purely because due to my timezone I'm around the most I guess. A lot of groups I've worked in have this whole leader shtick going on and it's generally not pleasant.

E~

[Access]

Originally Posted by Emess

I'm all for the way my group works. There is no leader however each project is generally managed by someone. We do whatever it is that someone wants to do assuming others are interested and its up to them to keep it going. I tend to manage the majority of things although thats purely because due to my timezone I'm around the most I guess. A lot of groups I've worked in have this whole leader shtick going on and it's generally not pleasant.

E~

The group-within-a-group or project groups is how lots of the "larger" groups (in terms of number of people) have been since those formed around mid-2000 or so. But what do you do, if, say, two project groups both want to sub the same thing? Or if two people start to fight and their fighting is driving everyone else batty. Most of these groups still have someone to step in extreme cases where it's needed. And what that person actually does in these situations, just depends. If you don't have a good person to step forward there, you can find yourself ending up with de-facto "mob rule" in a difficult situation.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Access

Someone who has seen first-hand the rise and fall of groups can better choose which groups to be, or stay, a part of, and will have a better chance at sucess in this way also.

In my experience, being knowledgeable just sets up limitations on what you want to do. If I start a project with old friends, it's almost guaranteed one of them isn't going to take it seriously or will have "real life issues", and if I join a new group to start off fresh, it's limiting to know all the typical newbie faults. I timed stuff for newbie groups in the past, and some of the shit that's been thrown into the script was so wrong you can't help but to say something about it, 'cause obviously you don't want to put out a crappy release. These two are pretty much the main reasons why I don't fansub anymore - old people being old and tired, and young people being young and inexperienced (that and watching too much anime).

[Emess]

Originally Posted by Access

The group-within-a-group or project groups is how lots of the "larger" groups (in terms of number of people) have been since those formed around mid-2000 or so. But what do you do, if, say, two project groups both want to sub the same thing? Or if two people start to fight and their fighting is driving everyone else batty. Most of these groups still have someone to step in extreme cases where it's needed. And what that person actually does in these situations, just depends. If you don't have a good person to step forward there, you can find yourself ending up with de-facto "mob rule" in a difficult situation.

My group is rather small so it's not really a problem. We have a decent TL and 5 encoders that manage everything else. I guess I and the TL generally maintain the peace, however in 2 years it hasn't been a problem yet.

E~

[Genius-kun]

I dont mind really. I prefer to start off as a worker and work my way up to be a leader. Leaders have a great responsiblity

[Exias]

To be blunt, I have no preference on either side of the fence. I do both quite happily.

[Vairna]

Do many fansubbers really care about having a dominant group leader in this day and age? Most (not all) of us should be mature enough to get on with the task without being whipped. Share and share alike is my motto. Take it in turns to oversee tasks.

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Vairna

Do many fansubbers really care about having a dominant group leader in this day and age? Most (not all) of us should be mature enough to get on with the task without being whipped. Share and share alike is my motto. Take it in turns to oversee tasks.

'Should' being the operative word.
In a hobby that is on a voluntary basis, you'd be surprised how often the word 'lazy' pops up.
Not everyone takes to taking initiative, I'm currently penning a theory that emails molested the majority of non working males as children, thus peeps have a strong aversion to them now.
And the idea of courtesy, to spend 2-3mins to send a note, memo or pass a msg if for some reason a person cannot complete their side of things?
Nonexistent, lol
- So it seems the ass whipper's job is still in demand somedays.

I'm not sure why so many people are hung up on the idea that a leader, or someone in charge = power hungry slut.
(Short of it being common practice, that pple are now jaded)
But getfresh and a few others have already mentioned the role of having someone deal with what would be the admin work within an office environment, the stuff behind the scenes, the recruiting and the networking and project jointing, etc etc.
Sometimes if there's disputes within two members, it helps if there's someone who'll give the final word or act as a mediator - these are typically the mundane, icky jobs but the leader is most likely the person who'll do them.

Guess it depends on the structure of the group at the end of the day and the pple involved.

[pichu]

Actually, some people I know of can only whip and only do the talk in fansubs... no more. It's either that, or these individuals are incapable of doing the same job as decent as their staff or anyone. Sad, but true.

[tenkenX6]

I personally prefer to be a staff member rather than a leader. I don't think I would make a good leader of a fansub group. I'm totally fine working under someone, as long as they're fair and tolerable(among some other qualities). Besides, I'm still pretty much a noob in the fansubbing community.

[shomazta]

Originally Posted by Emess

I'm all for the way my group works. There is no leader however each project is generally managed by someone. We do whatever it is that someone wants to do assuming others are interested and its up to them to keep it going. I tend to manage the majority of things although thats purely because due to my timezone I'm around the most I guess. A lot of groups I've worked in have this whole leader shtick going on and it's generally not pleasant.

E~

ditto, don't really like running around everywhere going "this is mine. mine, mine, mine!" So in that sense, I'm fine being a follower as long as whoever is leader understands I've got an actual life to worry about on the side. Don't care for the bitchy/bossy type

edit: read the op
I don't like being bound to anyone/anything, so if I'm helping a group, that's all there is to it, I'm only a member in one group and that's where it ends. Aside from that is just side projects, and I'm not "your" staff ;o