Tips for Working on Casting Words HITs

Discussion in 'CastingWords' started by nobody, Jun 6, 2012.

  1. nobody

    nobody User

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    I thought I'd start a thread with a few things I've learned about working for Casting Words. Feel free to add your own!

    I've done about 50 HITs for them. My score is still above 80 -- so far, so good! At first, I didn't get a lot of feedback. Lately I have gotten really helpful feedback, so I'll share some things that aren't in the style guide so maybe others can avoid spending as much time in CW Purgatory (my nickname for those budget HITs for those with scores under 85) as I have.

    1. Readability -- When you click on the view/submit tab in the HIT, make sure you have no more than 500 characters per paragraph. Otherwise, you may get feedback about poor readability. CW states that is about four or five lines, but on my computer it's more like two or three. Use a character counter (I use this one) until you can eyeball it.

    2. Leave comments -- In each HIT, there is a section for comments. You can use it to ask questions about spelling, etc. You can also use it to explain why you have a lot of xx's e.g. wind, train, plane.

    3. Em dashes -- Use a space before and after each em dash.

    4. Fillers -- I had one transcript where the editor found and deleted every instance of "kind of". I know this because I had a sentence like 'It was the kind of butterfly that..." and it ended up being "It was the butterfly that..." Leave a note in the comments if you have to use a filler, otherwise the editor might count off for it.

    5. Sentences that begin with And, But, Or, So -- Deleted 7-9-12. You aren't supposed to use these fillers, but some editors will put them back in.

    6. Use their website -- You can check all your scores on the CW website, turkers.castingwords.com. You can view the full edit here and see all of the changes to your transcript.

    7. Email them -- There was a big job that was broken up into at least 20 HITs. I got a few that had little or no audio; they only contained audience member discussion. You could only hear a word here and there, but I didn't transcribe them because it wasn't a verbatim HIT.

    The grader disagreed and gave me 5's. After totally freaking out, I emailed CW and they fixed it. I was loathe to email them at first (I figured they got tons of email every day), but every time I've emailed them, they have been very nice and helpful.

    That's all I can think of right now. Hope this helps!
     
    #1 nobody, Jun 6, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 10, 2012
  2. melissa71642

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    5. Sentences that begin with And, But, Or -- I only use these at the beginning of sentence fragments made from breaking up run-on and/or complex sentences. I still can't figure out if I'm supposed to put a comma after these. I've done it both ways, and it was changed both times.

    99.9999% of the time these can be left of. They're considered to be filler words and most of the time will be taken out :)

    Also when using... Use that to mark a false start that has to be left in and please remember no spaces after...Make sure you capitalize the first word after that...too please.

    I've been doing these a long while and things do change, so it doesn't hurt to glance at the Style Guide every now and then.
     
  3. nobody

    nobody User

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    Thank you! That's one I've seen before (false start...Capital letter) in my feedback.

    Those fillers are killing me! I started leaving them in only because I kept getting feedback like 'missing words' and they'd be put back in, in the final edit. Fillers and commas are like my kryptonite, lol.
     
  4. melissa71642

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    There is an editor right now that keeps adding them back in and I emailed my contact over there and he assured me that he contacted that particular editor and asked them to stop doing that and grading down :) When I do edits, I only add them back in if they're longer than a few seconds and/or add to the meaning of the transcript, which most of the time they don't. Also, unless it's verbatim, don't add in every like, you know, I mean, etc., because they make the final product look messy and very unprofessional. Those fall under filler words, but today, I've seen several edits where every instance of those words were included and had to be removed.

    I could write a novel on the subject of CW, but I'll be here all night. LOL
     
  5. melissa71642

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    I also wanted to add that I've maintained a PPT over 100 (for my editor and transcriber quals) for more than 3 years now and if you have any questions about anything, always feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll do my best to answer it. I do know that there are some things that aren't really clear in the style guide, so I can help clear anything up from my own experience with them. Pretty much the only requester I do work on Mturk for is CW and it's been that way for a while now :)
     
  6. nobody

    nobody User

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    That's awesome. Thank you so much. :)
     
    #6 nobody, Jun 6, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 6, 2012
  7. mearek

    mearek Member

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    Thanks for the great tips! I have only done about 10 of the CW hits and 4 of the SpeechInk. Who do you guys think are the better of the two? I would like to devote more time to transcription. I believe CW pays more, but SI also has bonus programs.
     
  8. mearek

    mearek Member

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    I have to say thank you for this thread. I actually got (back) into mTurk to do the transcribing, but the only place online for any kind of info, I thought, was TN. I was wrong. I could not get any info from that site because what I was interested in was marked "private". That is why I have only done 10 transcripts with them. I will really devote more time to it now. Thanks guys!!
     
    #8 mearek, Jun 7, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 8, 2012
  9. mearek

    mearek Member

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    I got my feet wet again today and did a transcript for CW and I am happy to say I got a 9 on it! Thanks again for this thread!
     
  10. nobody

    nobody User

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    As far as which is better, I think it's different for each person. CW does seem to pay more though.

    Congrats mearek, that is so awesome! Keep it up and I'm sure your PPT will shoot up in no time. Once you get the hang of transcribing for them, you can give editing a try, which should make you even more $$. Good luck!
     
  11. melissa71642

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    These days, editing is pretty much a waste of time for me because of really, really bad work coming through. I did one the other day and it was 20 minutes long and took over an hour to do due to poor work by the transcribers. Most of the time, I type faster than I can edit and my hourly rate is far better on the transcribing than editing, but that's just me. :)

    Another thing to remember that I've been seeing a lot lately in grading and the few edits that I've done. The examples comes directly from the Style Guide.

    If someone is saying something and changes direction and then goes back to the original sentence, use -- to mark this instead of cluttering up the transcript with ... Example I actually had an experience -- a very traumatic experience -- trying to deal with women's health issues on my own, so I'll talk about that.

    Another example: First of all, initially -- I'll backtrack a little bit -- it was difficult to find a gynecologist that I was comfortable with in the first place. So that's not a fun experience for anyone, first, because you have to make a lot of decisions.

    And one more: Basically, the doctor had said that -- and I had kind of put off my exam, because you get busy, and you just don't want to make that appointment and go in -- and she said that if I had waited six more months.

    ...should only be used to mark false starts and somebody talking and just all of a sudden changing directions and moving on to something else. Example: I was telling my friends who said...My husband told me I need to pick up milk.

    Hope this helps you guys :)
     
  12. nobody

    nobody User

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    That's disappointing. I always thought editing paid really well. I finally tried an editing HIT a couple of weeks ago, but I'll save that story for another day. :eek:

    That's a great tip about em dashes versus ellipses. I wasn't even using em dashes at first because the style guide stated they were for emphasizing a word or phrase.

    So yes, that helps! With em dashes, I can give my poor comma key a break.
     
  13. melissa71642

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    Well, the reason I think that they put that in there about those em dashes is because they were being overused, but now the problem lies with comma usage being way over the top due to that one thing being added. it's kind of a damned if you, damned if you don't type of thing. Those examples I posted came directly out of their samples of a 9 transcript.

    Editing requires a ton more work because you have to fix other people's mistakes and well, it's a crap-shoot. Sometimes you get a bunch of good transcribers that have done excellent work with only minimal changes, (that's when edits pay really well, but this is also VERY rare to come across) or you'll get a transcript that has to have every other word changed and that's when it's just not worth it to me.
     
  14. Shaman

    Shaman Member

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    According to the CW Style Guide, em dashes should only be used "to place -- special emphasis -- on a word or phrase. It’s like increasing the volume of a guitar during a solo to make it stand out."

    In my experience, most editors prefer to see commas where em dashes would normally be, even if the sentence ends up being difficult to read or making no sense.

    I always check the final edits of my transcripts, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that at least 80% of my em dashes were converted to commas in the final edit, even on transcripts where I got a 9.

    I did a transcript once where the speaker was constantly changing direction and then going back to the original sentence. I ended up getting a 7 on that transcript due to "excessive use of em dashes." :(

    Because of this, I've developed a small em dash phobia. I very rarely use them now and that seems seems to be pleasing the graders and editors. *knocks on wood*
     
    #14 Shaman, Jun 11, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 11, 2012
  15. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Edits that restore grammatical errors will present a problem for me. I may or may not continue working for CW if this happens frequently.
     
    #15 hapless, Jun 11, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 11, 2012
  16. melissa71642

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    What type of grammatical errors are being restored?
     
  17. hapless

    hapless Guest

    On a second look at one of my transcripts, I see (in hindsight) that my attempted corrections were not very well done. So in this case I won't complain about an editor's choice to simply restore some content from the original podcast, complete with simple grammatical errors.
     
    #17 hapless, Jun 11, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 11, 2012
  18. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Again I wish to reiterate that my work on the transcript in question was not very good (certainly not my best), and I will accept the editor's decisions.

    One was of the form: 'A and B is C'. I attempted a rather clumsy 'correction' which the editor justifiably rejected. In hindsight obviously I should have simply replaced 'is' with 'are'. D'oh!
     
  19. melissa71642

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    The thing about fixing people's grammatical errors in transcripts for CW is sometimes them saying there's instead of there are are just their tone and we should try to keep that tone in tact as much as possible. There are some errors that should be fixed, but overall, we should try to leave what they say and how they say it in the transcript as much as possible, especially if it's one of those stinkin' verbatim ones :) This has been debated over at the other forum before it got to how it is now for years, and it's always been CW's opinion that if they say something, we should just type what they say for the most part and not worry about it too much :)
     
  20. melissa71642

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    Just don't let it worry ya too much and remember that nearly no one speaks in grammatically correct sentences and this is more about capturing their speech rather than writing a term paper :)
     

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