I don't work on CastingWords transcribing work as my language is not perfect. But I work on his 'Adding time stamps' hits. According to me He is a good requester. But why you asked so?
I've been having a really, and I mean REALLY hard time with CastingWords as of late. They constantly reject transcripts and never get any feedback as to why. I don't understand their grading standards when I get the max bonus for 8/10 HITS then 2 are flat out rejected....when they are all part of the same HIT group. I am beyond frustrated and I cannot get anyone to answer any of my messages. Anyone have similar issues?
Sort of: http://mturkforum.com/showthread.php?1787-What-the-hell-CastingWords That was the only transcribing job of theirs I have done.
I do almost all my work for Casting Words, actually. I like working for them, but in the past I've had times where I've had grades that were unfair, etc. Used to be I could go on the Casting words subforum on the turker nation forum to complain about them, but that door is closed now. So, when I really want to gripe about a bad grade, I just write them. (That is, go to dashboard page, click the date, look up the number of the hit, and click "Contact Requester," etc.) They've been pretty good about answering me lately. They actually changed back some of my grades from 8s to 9s when there was a problem. If you're going to work for Casting Words, you really need to check out their live hits list at http://turkers.castingwords.com/hit/list and especially their feedback list at http://turkers.castingwords.com/feedback This requires signing up for their site but it's really worth it. The live hits site is much quicker than looking for their hits directly on mturk. The feedback page has a link to the full edit of your transcript, so you can see what got changed. I'm doing pretty well with Casting Words these days but I have to really seriously high grade the hits, that is, be ruthless about returning stuff that I think I won't get a 9 on. My return rate is about 7.3 percent. I try to keep it down, but sometimes you just accept a hit and about a minute or two in the audio turns to mush or everyone talks over everyone else or some other grade killing situation. The grades you get on Casting Words determines your worker rating which determines whether you can work on the more expensive hits, the express and expedited hits. I really like listening to all the different stuff I hear all day. And I can type really fast, and I have a transcription pedal (which makes a big difference). So, I'm doing all right, but I've been doing this since September 2010.
That is the kind of info I was looking for. Could you tell me what pedal you are using? How long does it take you per minute of audio, if ya don't mind me asking?
I've got an Infinity transcription pedal that I bought off of Amazon for around $50. I waited a long time to buy one because I thought it would be hard to get used to, but it made me type twice as fast. I think it's taking me about 5 minutes of work for each minute of audio, at least if I'm not also screwing around checking Facebook and forums and stuff. (But I'm usually always looking for the next hit, etc.) It used to take me 10 minutes or more. The longer I do this, the faster I get.
Just did one of their hits..took me 1 hour to transcirbe about 4 minute long clip...pay was 43 cents+bonus depending on how good you did.I would be really pissed if they rejected it,i sincerely did the best i could.
@Seesaw They judged mine rather harshly, although they still accepted and gave a slight bonus. I took about as long as you did as well. Good luck on the job you submitted.
I do work for them quite a bit, but not so much lately. I weed through the bad audio to find ones with (mostly) clear speech. I mostly get rated at 7's, 8's, and 9's, and so far I've gotten them to change my ratings on a few jobs for the better when I've sent them messages through MTurk disagreeing with the final rating. Signing up for the website helps -- you can see what mistakes you've made and if other workers graded your work at a higher grade than you ended up with. Good luck!
I don't see how anyone can make any real money doing their hits. The pay is terrible and it takes forever to transcribe audio.
Sorry to drag up an old thread... I love audio transcription and am particularly interested in working with Casting Words. I completed a transcription for them this week and two graders gave me an "8" but the bonus I got was for a "7" with no explanation as to why the grade was dropped. Not so happy about this.
I used to do a lot of work for them when they paid higher. But then they totally changed their payment scheme and I started getting worse grades so it just didn't seem worth it at all. But if you're a good typer and can speak English well they are pretty decent HITs to do.
I just wanted to add, out of complete fairness, that I messaged CW about the grade that was underpaid and within 24 hours I was awarded the 5 cent extra. Nice job CW!