Wow, Slicer. So how are you coping with the "new normal?" Are you qualified to write the only articles left, the ones that pay $17?
I'm not coping. I'm looking for a new, IRL, job. I'm only here until I find one. And, as far as I know, NOBODY is qualified to write those English Resource articles- otherwise, they'd be long gone by now.
By the way, to any potential CS client reading this, I do want to make one thing clear: You get what you pay for. There are a lot of good writers who work for CS, and you can put as many quality assurance checks on as you want. However, if you want quality, you need to do two things: you need to demand quality by making factual checks and actually reading the material yourself for coherence and whether or not your readers actually want it, and you need to pay for quality. Very few good writers are going to spend an hour on a five-dollar article, cross-checking references and putting together something that isn't only grammatically excellent, it's factual and understandable. Why not? Because that's five dollars an hour! If you pay two cents a word, you're probably, with rare exceptions, going to get something loosely paraphrased from Wikipedia and maybe a few other sites. Pay less than two cents a word, and you might not even get that. The good writers who otherwise would have given you something intelligible are instead going to give you the generic fluff you asked and paid for.
I really enjoy CS's HITs... As a new Turker it still depressed me to hear they are a shell of what they once were... Even without this knowledge, I did always wish their HITs had more availability. I have always hoped they would release a HIT I could bulk on - and they did recently, but I my approval rate was too low And for a very unjust reason as well... Any chance of CS bouncing back and becoming a great work provider?
I'm not old enough on MTurk to remember CrowdSource under past names so I can't really say if they've gotten worse.. to me they're just like Crowdflower, 90% of their stuff is crap and not worth my time and the other 10% is decent.. Then they occasionally have a gem of a hit that you can make some big money on, that's sadly rare though
I expect that they will make a comeback. They were the first mturk requesters to come up with a logical writing qualification test and an efficient editorial process. They're just going to have to get some better paying clients who will pay for the research needed to make google happy. And the clients ARE out there. Media Piston (who was Question Swami on mturk) has people paying $18 for 300-500 word articles.
Wait - they might just be posting their writing work through here now? http://www.write.com/become-a-paid-writer/ I might email Sammy and ask... Hmm...
That's just how you get their writing qual, which means just a little more than absolutely nothing right now. But the test is fun if you enjoy writing.
I was told that those are reserved for ONE specific writer whom a client requested. More BS from CS. Hey, that's catchy....(pats self on back)
In order to make a comeback, they need to shift from content mill to marketing company. That requires much stricter vetting of writers.