Random musing

Discussion in 'CastingWords' started by ayeembored, Jan 1, 2013.

  1. ayeembored

    ayeembored Active Member

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    Trying hard to be vague enough to not be in trouble but specific enough that those of us who do a lot of CW hits can understand.

    I wish there was a place to discuss the hits in more detail, especially clients that have lots of material that repeats itself, like the set of interviews that went up today or the client who seems to be writing a book and has been having interviews on the same incident transcribed for about a year, or the client with the mild accent who has several shows a week come up in expediteds, or the client who is usually express and has the odd capitalization instructions could have a section with what to do when such and such happens. Information and names and such that have been Googled could be compiled in one spot to make transcription easier and more accurate. I know that confidentiality makes that difficult, but there's got to be a way. I know putting it behind a password wall would hide it from search engines and such.

    Of course, if this kind of stuff IS behind your subscriber wall, naturegirl, I might have to buy the book, even though I don't have a Kindle. I had a Nook before I REALLY heavily started working online.
     
  2. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Hi, ayeembored,

    So sorry to take so long seeing and responding to a post that was partly addressed to me!

    I actually really like this idea. :) To be honest, I have struggled with not wanting to be too elitist in my site's Members' Area, which for the most part means that I neglect it more than I mean to and post most stuff in the public area. However, your idea is terrific. I don't know of any place, either, where we CW transcribers can dish freely about specific HITs. CW doesn't provide one, for sure.

    It's never occurred to me that we could all use someplace to post names that have been Googled, etc. That is an especially awesome part of your idea, although just the ability to worry a lot less about confidentiality would be useful. This forum and even my publicly accessible blog are definitely too available to make discussions like that possible in either place, but my Members' Area...huh. :) The titles of the posts in it are searchable by search engines, but none of the post contents or comments in that area can be viewed by nonmembers or search bots, so yes, nothing from it is indexed.

    I'm considering putting something up this weekend based on your idea! I'll PM you about this now. Oh, but for the record, no one needs a Kindle to read my book. Amazon has free apps for that. There are Nook-reading apps for Kindle; I wonder if there are Kindle-reading apps for Nook! But in any case, you can get Amazon kindle emulator apps that will run right on your PC (or Mac, and there's a workaround for Linux, too).
     
  3. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    So everyone knows, here's what I concluded after some more discussion with ayeembored and also with CastingWords.

    CW is really concerned about not violating their clients' privacy, so at this point they're uncomfortable with us tossing names back and forth, even behind a member wall; after all, I can't guarantee that everyone back there actually transcribes for CW.

    One idea that ayeembored had was having CW create a wiki that they host within the login area at turkers.castingwords.com; this would meet their privacy standards, and still allow transcribers the ability to post useful information for each other. I've passed that on to CW.

    If they don't like that idea either, I can still host something like this, but it would be crippled, in a way, because no specific names and information could be used. So let's see what they say!
     
  4. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Had CW decided otherwise, I might have considered submitting a note of concern to CW.

    Don't take this personally AT ALL, but I'd have several initial questions and concerns regarding ANY third-party adopting the role of external host for discussions involving privileged and confidential details of transcripts.

    (Further, I may feel that such an arrangement might lead to a sort of implied compulsion to participate, as a means of remaining on equal-footing with other transcribers; not as a matter of competition, but of fairness to those who might not wish to share privileged information through third-party-hosted community resources.)


    (There I go again, using a semicolon. I love semicolons.) ;-)
     
  5. hapless

    hapless Guest

    CW has an unused 'forums' area on their support site. I wonder if they could resurrect and open it as an actual forum, with an area for transcribers (with all appropriate arrangements, of course, to help protect and safeguard privileged information).
     
    #5 hapless, Jan 15, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 15, 2013
  6. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    Or...you could have just commented about it here in the thread, earlier. :) Why wait to see what happens and then run to CW? The discussion was being held here because you were invited, along with any other forum members who'd want to chime in.

    Your opinion counts!
     
  7. hapless

    hapless Guest

    > "run to CW"

    F* off.
     
    #7 hapless, Jan 19, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 19, 2013
  8. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    Why do you have to be so condescending under the guise of being understanding at the same time? It's bad enough everyone had to go through a bunch of changes but then if they'd implemented a "safe" place hosted somewhere other than with CW I'd hope EVERYONE would "run to CW" and complain. I'm all for enterprise, but enough's enough of their promoting your stuff - I'd be pissed if they started doing it heavily.
     
  9. naturegirl

    naturegirl User

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    I was not trying to be condescending. And, well, I do understand that sometimes people figure no one will listen to them. But my point was, I was pretty puzzled that hapless would have such big concerns and not comment in the public discussion. I mean, to me, that's what the forum is for, so we can figure stuff out. Commenting to CW after the fact seemed like a good way to cause a bigger mess (having them reverse a decision, or pissing him off that they wouldn't) than just mentioning his concern here in the first place.

    That was what I was getting at. :) I don't think either I or the OP thought about the issue he mentions when discussion first began! It would have been super-helpful to have his viewpoint earlier, and would have saved some time, too.

    Still, we've had a lot of family stress lately, so if that's coming through in my posts and I'm being too heavy-handed, I apologize.

    I would have loved for you to mention this in the thread I started when I was starting work on the revised Style Guide. Perhaps there would have been more I could do to keep certain things the same. Although honestly, most of it is the same style CW had---just spelled out in ways it was never spelled out before.

    I don't see you here often, though, so perhaps you never saw it. That meant the only feedback I had to work with was that people *wanted* changes, as in that thread. So that's what happened. (And also, you've mentioned in another thread that you no longer transcribe for CW, which makes this moot to you, right?)

    I would too! After hapless said what he said, I understood the concern. I just hadn't even thought of it before. Again, I'm not taking any issue with this suggestion about going to CW.

    I take issue with the not-helpful timing. :) I knew hapless was around, since he was asking lots of questions during that period but not chiming in here. So if he had something major like that to say, it's hard for me to get why he'd want to wait passively and not mention it, so we could figure out we were missing something. I gave no indication I was even going to ask CW early on, so clearly it would have been a good time to speak up with something so important.

    Hm. I was pleasantly surprised when it first happened that they talked up the book I wrote. Since I don't control whether they do or not, I'm guessing you were just speaking your own mind about that.
     
    #9 naturegirl, Jan 22, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 22, 2013
  10. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    Transcription is not the only job they offer, but it is good to know you keep tabs.

    Stating over and over again that hapless was active in the forum, on a transcription topic, for CW does NOT mean participation in this thread was even remotely necessary. I'm sure the thought was, "CW is smarter than that" and was reassured with how things turned out.
     
    #10 Whimsy, Jan 22, 2013
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 22, 2013

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