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've encountered this, Melissa. I've over-corrected grammar to the point of changing the speaker's tone, and was rightfully downgraded because of it. My feedback indicated that I changed the speaker's tone and that the transcript needed to follow the speaker's (and CW's) conversational style of grammar.

    I've learned to correct blatant grammar mistakes while leaving the speaker's tone intact. I just wish they had more work so I could show them that I finally got it. :)
     
  2. hapless

    hapless Guest

    @ Melissa:

    I understand what you're saying, though I am still struggling to strike the proper balance versus the style guide's advice to "... clean it up [grammatically] the best you can without changing the meaning or the feeling ...."

    [Recalling the example I mentioned ('A and B is C'), I am sure that a simple correction would have been justified for that transcript. IIUC, the transcript was apparently to be used in advertising. Surely it is good practice to correct such a simple error for the purposes of a printed advertisement. In this particular case there was surely no need to preserve the error for reasons of 'tone' etc.]
     
  3. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Beware:

    Some spell-checkers may ignore 'single letter' mistakes
    (as in "e go t the theater" for "we go to the theater").
    I made one such error in a recent transcript, and my spell-checker didn't flag it.
     
  4. Shaman

    Shaman Member

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    I checked the final edit of one of my latest transcripts and noticed the editor removed the spaces I had put before and after em dashes.

    Also, on one other transcript, I noticed the editor added a space after an ellipsis.

    I thought a very high PPT was needed to make final edits. Why on earth are these editors making such basic mistakes? :confused:
     
  5. melissa71642

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    No, a very high PPT is not needed for editing, but that's probably about to change because they are thinking about reworking quals. Spaces after em dashes and not after ... is in the style guide, but it's changed recently and some people probably haven't read the style guide in a while.
     
  6. Shaman

    Shaman Member

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    Regarding the space after an ellipsis, there's something in the CW guide that may be confusing some people. This:

    "Use an ellipsis... to mark a break, such as a speaker breaking off mid-sentence..."

    Later on, it's clear that there shouldn't be a space before or after an ellipsis, but the fact that CW put a space after an ellipsis in their own style guide may be throwing some people off.
     
    #26 Shaman, Jun 15, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 15, 2012
  7. melissa71642

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    But there's an update in there after that that says that they no longer want the space in there. But, this is a pretty recent change so a lot of editors probably haven't looked over the style guide to read the change. It's not like CW announces style guide changes, when they really should for the sake of consistency.

    Important! Style Change for Ellipsis Usage

    We have decided we prefer no spaces between dots because sometimes the line breaks and they get split up. For a similar reason there shouldn’t be a space between an ellipsis and the word before or after it. Also we prefer not to use the "Smart" ellipses that Word (as well as some other applications) provides."
     
  8. pwt

    pwt User

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    I've had that happen as well. I've quit using them almost entirely. Too many editors don't understand their proper usage, and frankly neither does CastingWords:

    That is not what double dashes are for.

    I got a note about that on June 5th or 6th:

    These are supposed to be marked so that you know if the comment is from a Turker or CW, and they never, ever are. Not to mention it's missing information. I didn't know the style guide changed, and why should I? If it gets updated then we should be notified. CW has my email address since I have an account on their site. They could use a blog. Even that note could have said "The style guide has been updated; don't use spaces after the ellipsis."

    There are a few things CW could improve on:

    1. Start a blog. All it need contain are notes such as "we're low on jobs right now but nothing is broken or wrong, so be patient", and "the style guide has been updated".

    2. Rewrite the style guide. There's no coherent layout. It's just seemingly random rules one after another. An index would help along with HTML targets for linking directly to a specific rule. The "what if" guide should be integrated so there is only a single guide to reference.

    3. Change the grades. An edit having mostly superficial changes (many of which are debatable) in a lengthy piece of audio should not result in a 16% drop in pay (9 to 8). 9s should be rare, I agree, but truly superficial edits shouldn't result in such a steep drop from 3x to 2.5. What is perfect and what isn't is very subjective and that's a big change in pay. We all know how much that can mean on long or difficult audio. I had four 8-minute clips the other day split evenly between 8s and 9s. The 8s paid $3.43, the 9s paid $4.11. That's a lot when you don't do very many HITs and they take a while to do. (Good quality 8min clips takes me about 40m all told.)

    One of the 8s had 19 total changes, one of the 9s had 17.

    Really? If someone wants to argue that 19 (or even 17) is too many changes for a 9 then that's fine with me. But where exactly is the line? How is that anything other than differing opinions of editors?

    A lot of edits were debatable. One edit split a paragraph for no apparent reason. It was under 500 characters per the style guide and it wasn't a natural break in speaking. I'd say half or more of the commas added are debatable. You can be grammatically perfect, or true the the audio, and get fair, consistent, and accurate edits and grades from that. But you can't do both. If you do both (and you have to do both), you fall in the middle and there will *always* be an editor who disagrees with what you did. If a transcript needs so many commas added that it's obvious the transcriber has issues, then obviously the grade should reflect that (and that person should be getting notes in feedback). But that alone shouldn't be dropping grades. Splitting a paragraph when it meets the character/line requirement in the style guide should not count for much either.

    How about bringing back the 10? Here's how it is now:

    7: 2x base pay
    8: 2.5x base pay
    9: 3x base pay

    Here's how I think it should be:

    7: 2x base pay
    8: 2.5x base pay
    9: 2.75x base pay
    10: 3x base pay

    If CW thinks that's going to cost them too much money, then rearrange that any way you like. The point is to blunt the drop from 9 to 8 over nitpicky stuff.

    4. If the style guide is changed and there's no useful mechanism to notify transcribers, like a blog, then grades and editors should give transcribers a grace period and feedback should note that edits were made based on updates to the style guide. Not forever, but a few days or a week after the change would be nice. A note that the guide will be updated in the near future would be even better. There's no reason the feedback area can't be used for other things, especially when CW and editors leave it empty most of the time.

    5. Find a way to get rid of the notes inside the transcription HITs that aren't for transcribers. Things like speaker names are very useful, other things are just a distraction and for new transcribers, confusing, since many of those notes are for editors. Before I knew that, I lost two ~14 minute transcriptions (rejected) because I followed the notes which said to skip the first X minutes of audio.

    6. Update the CW site to add features. The live HITs page could use an update especially. Viewing HITs in an unordered list is awful. Tables were designed to display tabulated data, like this (http://bit.ly/NrBvZa). They should use them. I have a Greasemonkey script in development that does that but it's still a hack and it's still pretty ugly.

    7. Better quality control on difficult audio. I've had difficult audio jobs that weren't difficult (needed nothing more than to have the audio amplified), and "easy" jobs that were very hard. 5 or more people in a round table, lots of speakers talking over each other, etc.

    8. Perhaps people with really high PPT scores or people who have been with CW for a long time (dedicated veteran workers) can be given preferential access to express HITs. Those are supposed to be completed by CW within 7 days, right? Put them up for 24-36 hours the very first time with a high PPT qualification requirement. As a little reward (that won't cost CW extra money) for dedicated and skilled workers. If the HITs don't get taken, put them back with a normal PPT requirement and let anyone grab them. That should still leave 132-144 hours (5.5-6 days) for them to get done. Plenty of time. Should also give new workers or workers who submit junk an incentive to worker harder to get their PPT up.

    9. Give people a small bonus (however much you want) for correctly reporting audio that's so awful that it simply can't be transcribed. A few cents or whatever. It won't pay much and it'll be pretty rare, but it's a nice way to reward transcribers for doing the right thing and not just walking away from it for someone else to get troubled with.

    OK, so not just a few. But thoughts?
     
  9. nobody

    nobody User

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    I debated about putting that in as a tip. The example transcript on CW? No spaces before or after the em dash, but I've looked at several of my final transcripts and most had a space before and after.

    All my feedback on CW informs me that I should read the style guide. *I* have. I refer to it each time I transcribe for them (which hasn't been for weeks). I suspect many people who have worked with them for a long time have not, and these are the people doing the grading. :/
     
  10. zinni

    zinni User

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    Man, I need to get over here more often. I didn't even realize we had a CW forum here now. Yay! (I used to use the TN CW forum but since the Great Purge of January '12 I couldn't get on it anymore.)

    I've been working for CW since Sep '10, so I kind of know my way around.

    On em dashes: my understanding was that they were only for setting off phrases within a sentence that was a complete phrase itself, and not for emphasis.

    I must confess I rarely look at the final edits of my 9s, which is most of my work; anytime I get anything lower I check it out and see what the issues were. Then I adjust my style accordingly.

    On, like, you know, kind of, junk, like, words: I take a lot of them out but sometimes a "like" or a "you know" actually adds to the meaning of what's being said. And if somebody uses "right?" constantly or "you know what I mean?" I take that out, too.

    On words that aren't exactly words: this is probably not officially OK, but there are some "words" that I leave as they are because "correcting" them sounds stupid. Like "gotcha." When someone says, "Gotcha," it doesn't mean, "Got you." Or, "that's a gimme," doesn't work as "that's a give me."

    I have a personal issue with the word "y'all." When someone says "y'all" and it's clear that that's what they're saying, I write it that way. If someone says, "you all" that's what I write. I have staked my grades on it in the past and still got 9s.

    I really wish there was a specific set of instructions for doing software instructions and the like. I'm always at a loss as to how many quotations and capital letters I should be throwing around when they're saying something like, "Go to file and then open and then select this." You know?

    If there was just one thing I could get CW to do, I would get them to make their customers listen to at least one minute of their own audio. Or at least have to check off a box and pretend they listened to at least one minute of it. It's just sad when you hear dozens of interviews that someone went to all the trouble to set up and do and hardly any of it is hearable by human beings. I once even found a phone interview where the interviewee wasn't recorded at all.

    I mean, sometimes I just wish I could make these people listen to their audio, so that maybe they'll realize how it's all coming out. How hard could it be to point the microphone at the person talking and not talk over them? And maybe not record in the food court of the mall or some other extremely noisy place? Aargh.

    Just venting. I'm actually glad to have some other word farmers (word miners? word serfs?) to compare notes with. *:)
     
  11. Rmbr1

    Rmbr1 Member

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    ---
    Hi All,

    I just discovered this forum:D I had almost given up on there being an open forum for CW.

    This thread really makes me nostalgic about the old TN proboards of Casting Words. It was an amazing resource for me when I started of as a newbie in '10. Even though I very rarely posted I saw how helpful all the active members on that board were. The new TN, I'm sad to say, is quite impossible :(

    CW is a very stable requestor. If you can stick through the starting learning phase and be as conscientious as possible with your work you can really have some sort of stable income. Threads like these are very much needed.

    My thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

    Peace.
     
    #31 Rmbr1, Jul 24, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 25, 2012
  12. pwt

    pwt User

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    FYI, you're posting in it. ;)
     
  13. Rmbr1

    Rmbr1 Member

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    Thanks (sheepish look!!):)

    Just edited my original post.
     
  14. Scott

    Scott User

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    I agree CW is one of the better requesters out there. I never had any issues with them, plus they are really good communicating!
     

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