Casting words sucks?

Discussion in 'CastingWords' started by spudarthur, Jun 24, 2012.

  1. idragonborn

    idragonborn Member

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    I wonder if doing a certain amount of hits with 8 or better would raise the ppt score quickly until it hits the 90s region.
     
  2. Chytay

    Chytay User

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    I've been transcribing for CW for several years and my PPT is 100. I know it's hard to raise your PPT over 90, but it can be done. If you continue to turn in good work, your score will eventually raise. Your time with them is also taken into account when they change your PPT. So the longer you are with them, the more stable your PPT is.

    If you check your final edit and see few or no edits and you get a low grade, contact Nathan. There are a few bad graders, but they don't last very long and notifying Nathan will alert him to a possible cheating editor.
     
  3. Chytay

    Chytay User

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    One problem CW has with new transcribers is cheaters. I hate to edit a transcript that was done with software and not checked. The mistakes are glaring and deserves a 1 and no pay. Most of the time the whole transcript has to be redone by somebody.

    Another thing to keep in mind is to use short sentences and paragraphs. That's where a good transcriber can take a speech of 10 minutes and 1 long sentence and turn it into short sentences. If you run on with long sentences and paragraphs, you will be probably get a 7 or below.
     
  4. hapless

    hapless Guest

    CW has claimed that I transcribed a certain word which (they allege) was not present in the audio. I strongly disagree.

    I have isolated the word in question, not only by ear, but also visually in the audio waveform. In the waveform image, I see that the word is clearly distinguishable, and clearly bounded by inflections in amplitude. In any case, I assert that the sound of the word is sufficiently clear and distinct (to my ear, anyway).

    I'll continue striving for accuracy for as long as I continue transcribing for CW.
     
  5. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    Does anyone here have experience with the bonuses for Improve a Transcript? 95%+ have been approved but I haven't received a bonus for any of them yet...and honestly that's the only thing that makes them worth doing. I'm thinking maybe it was a holiday week so just wait for next week?

    My transcription bonuses have mostly come through in the same time period.
     
  6. Chytay

    Chytay User

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    You will get the base pay the day it's approved.

    The Improve bonuses aren't paid until the whole transcript is finished. Sometimes that may take a day or two for it to show up. But so far, I've never missed a bonus on Improve's.
     
  7. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    56 of that type, some (over 20) from July 2nd. I was hoping the delay was due to a holiday. It is good to hear your experience, thanks. Will hopefully be a quick cashout when they start rolling in.
     
  8. pwt

    pwt User

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    This isn't about CW sucking (I don't think CW sucks FWIW) but since this is an active CW thread, has anyone gotten auto approvals within the past 24 hours? I did 20 CW HITs this evening (9th) and morning (10th) and they all are variations of this so far:

    These aren't a month old, they are coming in as I do them with maybe a few hours delay. I'm just curious what the deal is. They are all being approved as 8s, even though I got straight 9s from Turkers. Every single one.

    I don't know what the quick auto-approval is all about but I actually seem to be getting screwed a little with all these 8s. How can they all be 8s when all the Turkers grades are 9s? That seems a little odd.
     
  9. nobody

    nobody User

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    pwt,

    I had several of those auto approvals last week. Getting 8's is not new for me. Out of all the transcriptions I've done for CW, at least 80% were graded as 9's, but all got approved as 8's. No different with the auto approvals.

    Perfect transcript? 8. One filler? 8. Yet other transcribers can leave in 10 fillers, use % symbols and whatever else goes against the style guide (can you tell I've been editing?), and they get 9's.

    CW needs to fix their grading system.
     
    #29 nobody, Jul 10, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 10, 2012
  10. pwt

    pwt User

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    I did 20 HITs late last night and 19 of them were from the same source. Of the ones approved so far, 14 were 8s and 3 were 9s. I find it hard to believe that's justified. If 14 were "bad" enough to get an 8, how did I manage to accidentally do three that didn't need editing? If I did three that didn't need any editing, how did I muck up *14* others?

    If the 9s had one or more "grade 9" from Turkers and those graders were right, why did all the 8s also have one or more "grade 9", and they were wrong?

    There was only one word I couldn't get of the first 8-10 that I finally figured out in the last two because I finally got some necessary context (Ayurveda -- an Indian alternative medicine practice. If you can't figure out how to pronounce it when you can see the word, imagine hearing something and getting that word out of it.)

    They were all two minute clips, 3-5 paragraphs for most of it. No numbers. No inaudibles. I've gotten fairly good at false starts and sentence restructuring (this woman belted out one sentence that I swear had to have run 450 characters.) My grammar is fine. I've been writing about politics since 2006 online, I know how to write.

    Every time this happens I get this odd feeling, a little bit of excitement. I look forward to seeing the final edit, thinking maybe this time will be the time where I finally figure it all out. Then I look, and an 8 is basically someone splitting paragraphs (I've stopped following the CW style guide and have been purposefully making smaller paragraphs just to end that crap), adding commas where they don't really need to be, splitting a sentence when it didn't have to be split, confirming all my [xx]'s, etc.

    Sometimes I think these people don't understand that a valid [xx] isn't supposed to count against you.

    I don't know.

    I just saved 10 final edits from the CW website to my hard drive so I can go through them later this week and see if I can't learn a few things. Usually I can only get through one of these things before I get frustrated at all the nonsense edits, and ignore them for a couple of weeks.

    I love CW, I really do. I'd keep doing this work even if I knew for a fact that all I'd ever get for the rest of time are 8s. That might even be better than occasionally getting a 9 and not being able to do it on purpose.

    Of the 20 HITs I just did last night/this morning, 1-15 in the order I did them were either all 8s, or haven't been approved. That's 13 8s and two not approved yet. Of the final five, one hasn't been approved, one was an 8, and three were 9s.

    Why?

    I didn't start doing things differently at the end. If anything I'd have expected them to be worse because my wrists were burning, my fingers tired, my speed down significantly, and I was frankly bored out of my mind. I had done the bulk of them straight from 9:50pm to 1:07am.

    You know what it was? I sure don't. And I'd bet even money that I won't even after the final transcript is posted.

    More transparency would help. An explanation for why basically all 20 of those HITs got 9s from Turkers but were approved and paid as 8s would be nice. If you're going to ignore the Turkers then why are you paying them in the first place? If you aren't ignoring them, then why am I getting 9s from them and 8s from ... whoever? Who even makes the final decision?

    I'd sure like to know.
     
  11. interneteditor

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    I think it must be some sort of standard practice to knock you down a grade to pay you less. Most of my payouts are a grade less than I was given. I complained about one and got the bonus increased (all of 5 cents). They should be more honest about this.
     
  12. pwt

    pwt User

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    I think the problem is that CW has gone too far in automating their business. We transcribe, grade multiple times, edit, basically everything except get customers for them and do the payouts. There's no quality control, or it's not working. I guess it's just not working. Having multiple people grade a transcript should ensure that the grade is accurate and legitimate, but obviously it's not if you get two 9s from Turker graders but only paid for an 8.

    As I understand it, editors get paid based on how many grades they improve a transcript, which obviously is an incentive to make BS changes. But if two Turkers already gave you a 9, why is your transcript even being put up for editing at all? And if it's not, why are the graders being ignored by CW?
     
  13. pwt

    pwt User

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    This is what I was talking about. Some of the final edits are already coming up for the work I just did and here's a change they made:

    "...you know, there's a very very interesting issue of the role of nutritional substances in the development and treatment of major mood disorders."

    That's what the woman said and that's what I transcribed. She had a bad habit of saying "very very" all the damn time, but you can't reduce it (as the style guide says to do under the general cleanup rule) because they'll nail you for the dreaded "missing words".

    Here's the edit:

    "...you know, there's a very, very interesting issue of the role of nutritional substances in the development and treatment of major mood disorders."

    They added a comma between the two verys, even though there is no pause in the speech. I've actually had commas removed in similar situations when I did it the way the editor did.

    Which is it guys? Comma or no comma?

    Here's another (mine):

    "Now, Omega-3 fatty acids up to this point, have not been studied as a monotherapy for depression."

    And the edit:

    "Now, Omega-3 fatty acids, up to this point, have not been studied as a monotherapy for depression."

    No pause in the speech. I think you could do it either way. Looks like nitpicking to me. And get this, I just found an error that *they* missed:

    "That means they haven't been studies as the sole treatment modality for someone suffering from major..."

    That should have been "they haven't been studied". That was my mistake, which I just found, looking at the "final" edit that did nothing more than add commas. If anything, *I* should get paid for editing it. My changes would have been the only substantive changes for crying out loud.

    I did get a 9 on that. As well I should. All anyone did was add three commas that I think are debatable, while missing a wrong word.

    Now I'm looking at an 8 from that same source. Five added commas and two changes from "Doctor" to "Dr.", which by the way is not in the style guide. In fact the style guide says not to use abbreviations: "Dnt use abbrvs b/c thr diff 2 read & ur grd wl b lo. Spell out the words."

    Looking at another 8. They added back a "But" to start a sentence, which is wrong. They added a comma, again, for another "very very".

    Here's my text:

    "Ayurveda is far ahead of current western medicine in taking the role of nutrition very very seriously."

    And the edit:

    "And really, Ayurveda is far ahead of our current western medicine in really taking the role of nutrition very, very seriously."

    Huh? You don't start a paragraph with and like that. That's wrong. Why am I getting an 8 when all the editor is doing is messing it up? I think I'm going to complain about all of these. Adding 3-4 always arguable commas should not be the difference between an 8 and a 9.

    Edit: Yes, they added back a "really" in there as well. She used "really" like a lot of people use "like". It was unnecessary flotsam that we're supposed to remove. I swear, you just can't win this game. If you remove it like you're supposed to, they add it back. If you leave it in, they remove it.
     
    #33 pwt, Jul 10, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 10, 2012
  14. nobody

    nobody User

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    So it's not just me.

    I"m sorry you're having the same issues that I am. In my other post that just got deleted (grr) I posted that whatever you take out, they put back. Fillers, false starts, whatever.

    I can't remember what else I posted, so I'll try again tomorrow, lol. Hang in there, pwt. It can only get better...I hope.
     
  15. interneteditor

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    I am devastated, I just graded a transcription with lots of errors and I had to grade at 5. Lots of mistranscribed words, sentence order rearranged for no reason (didn't make more sense or anything), lots of false starts and "you know" typed up. I am so, so sorry whoever you were :(
     
  16. pwt

    pwt User

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    Could be someone trying to cheat by running it through a speech-to-text app and then just dumping the result onto you. I actually tried that myself and couldn't get it to work right. Not to cheat, just to speed things up. I figured even if a speech-to-text app made tons of errors, it'd still be faster to edit the heck out of it than to have to transcribe it by hand.

    I tried once and intend to try again with better software, listening to the audio clip through my earbuds (which I do anyway) while speaking what I hear into a microphone that's tied into a speech-to-text app. I thought that maybe if I got a good app and trained it to my voice, I could do it that way and make it go faster. Some good apps claim 99.x% accuracy if you train it to your voice.

    I still think that might work, but I need a good quality app, not the junk that comes with Windows 7. Something like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

    Anyway, maybe they were trying something like that without putting any effort into it. I find it quite annoying. I think half the reason there's a drought of work lately is because people are doing crap like that. The reason I did those 20 HITs last night (took me 4.5 hours) was because I was desperate for the work. They were all regular audio, not express. Paid crap. Grade 8 for 13 minutes of work was only worth 58 cents.

    But damn if it didn't beat having no work at all. $13.38 is better than $0.00 no matter how long it takes. And it still beats doing surveys and other stuff. I don't know how many more of those CrowdSource/Flower HITs doing Google searches I can take, doing the same search 10 times over.
     
  17. hapless

    hapless Guest

    My latest this morning was a simple 2-minute no-brainer.

    One editor gave it a 9, and another took it down to 8 -- with a note pointing out that I had transcribed at least a couple of repetitions verbatim: "Right, right" and "Good, good." ("Other than that, no edits.")

    So that simple transgression was enough to turn a 9 to an 8. I'm OK with that, it was my choice to preserve those repetitions, and I anticipated the 8.

    In any case, regardless of whether I may agree or disagree with a particular downgrade, I do appreciate an editor's courtesy in taking a moment to provide an explanatory note, rather than no explanation at all.
     
  18. interneteditor

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    Hapless, I am so sorry, that was me. I nearly did give a 9 but that's "no edits" and I really thought they didn't need to be repeated, but as you have pointed out, someone else might say they need to go back in.

    It's quite a minefield really. I'm so sorry :(
     
  19. Turkalicious

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    Sadly I will never get to try any of these out, I took the qual test like my dirst day Turking and got an 80. Since they don't let you retake it ever, no CW for me lol
     
  20. interneteditor

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    You can do the jobs at 80 though?
     

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