Wondering if anyone who took the Crowd Source Top Tier Writing noticed that the instructions say to write as if for a print magazine, yet the sample article shown is from a web page. The sample looks like a plain old blog entry or something. It doesn't make sense to me to have such seemingly strict standards for the test, then use a spammy looking sample to go by. Does Crowd Source know what it's doing? I've written for offline clients for the past few months, and I'd like to make some extra $ here, but I'm not sure about Crowd Source given mixed reviews I've seen and the oddness in the test instructions.
CrowdSource is by far the most reputable company on Mturk for writing for. Despite the mixed instructions I find it pretty clear what they are going for. I also believe they leave it up to your imagination a bit as an added extra test to see what you might hold in common sense as far as guessing what they want specifically. I know of a few people personally that have gotten the qual and judging by the payout on the work they offer for people with this qual it is most definitely worth a try in getting it if writing is your thing. If you go for it I wish you the best and as always Happy Turking!
I'm not sure I see the problem here. Some of the strict standards have to do with basic sentence construction and ability to follow the style guide. If you don't follow the guide or can't maintain consistent comma usage, it's probably not worth their time to teach or correct you. Magazines and blogs are similar because they both generally use second person and an informal tone. That's the style CS seems to like. Academic or journalistic writing can be very dry and tends to simply state the facts. I've actually had a similar issue in an entirely unrelated assignment. I was writing an article for a publication that reported on magazines (sort of a meta-magazine). The editor kept emailing us and telling us to jazz it up because our writing was kind of boring.
2muchTurkin: Thanks for the advice. glitter: The problem is that I expected the sample to better reflect the instructions. Keep in mind that I'm not much familiar with Crowd Source, and the first impression wasn't particularly good. Maybe I'm over-thinking it. I don't mind a strict style sheet as long as experienced editors are using it. I've worked with some nit-picking clients.
Hello, Joe, I had no experience with AP style before qualifying for the CrowdSource Top Tier assignments (or with writing to any style other than occasionally APA, for that matter). So although I work on those HITs here and there, I don't feel that I can answer in an informed way regarding whether they are consistent or good editors. They do seem very insistent on style, though---I haven't heard of them complimenting the way anyone turns a phrase, but I've frequently heard of them commenting because they felt someone violated AP style. I can't see the current example in their qual HIT, because I already have the qual and so am blocked from viewing that HIT again. But when I took it, the sample article was a travel piece on cnn.com. That certainly gave me a feel of things being on the up and up, although I already had no concerns about CrowdSource based on prior HIT experience with them. I can see why a spammy sample article would give you pause, though. You might be wondering why I am posting, in that case! It's because I see that you're new to the forums, and I wanted to comment in case you are new to Turking and your main concern is not being paid and/or getting a lot of rejected HITs from them. CrowdSource does not reject any HITs done by their Top Tier writers. Based on conversations with others, both on and off the forum, if they don't like the work you produce for a given article type, they pay you for everything you've done on it anyway, and then they internally block you (not any kind of block that MTurk would know about) from doing any more of that specific type. There's easily a half-dozen different Top Tier assignment types, so as long as they're not internally blocking you left and right, this would still leave you plenty of stuff to work on if you choose. And, you'll never work and not be compensated for your time. To me, it seems that you've got nothing to lose. Good luck, whatever you decide. Honestly, considering your experience with writing for off-Turk clients, I'd love to know how you feel about the CS editing, so I hope you'll post about that, should you get the qual and do some Top Tier HITs. (There's more on the CS Top Tier assignments at the existing thread for their current writers, in the CS subforum you've put this thread in.) ETA: Whoops, it's not in the subforum but is two levels up, in the Requesters forum.
Quite helpful. Thanks. That makes sense. I'll wait a bit and see if the sample topics and links change. Good to know their attitude about APA style, as it's what I"m used to using. Some editors obsess about style sheets ad nauseam. Not necessarily a bad thing, or a problem for me as long as I know. I have found that editors and clients tend to focus heavily on style or substance but rarely both together. Although, I haven't written for any national clients like CNN. The ones that scream about Oxford commas and such don't usually send copy back for revision. The ones that don't give hang about serial commas want to reword the everything. You're right - I am concerned about not getting paid and rejected HITs. I've done a few so far to check things out. One of which will probably be rejected. So out of the gate, a low rating to work with. Maybe MTurk isn't for me.