Casting words sucks?

Discussion in 'CastingWords' started by spudarthur, Jun 24, 2012.

  1. spudarthur

    spudarthur Member

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    I got grade 7 for each transcript that I've lastly done. Still, two transcripts pending. But why can't I transcribe anymore. It says my casting words PPT is 80. What the hell?
     
  2. hapless

    hapless Guest

    At the time of this reply, there appear to be no transcription HITs available for PPT level 80. At the moment I see a few Express jobs requiring PPT 88 (and an Expedited job requiring 99). You may need to wait until some new base-level jobs get posted.

    (I'm at PPT 86 so I'm waiting too) .___.
     
  3. spudarthur

    spudarthur Member

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    I hate this waiting game, man. I just mailed them and got this.

    Please send your Amazon worker ID so I can review your account, and send you important information about CastingWords. The only reason that you wouldn't be able to work is if your PPT dropped below 80, which happens to almost all new workers.

    I should've sent my Worker Id with it. Damn it to heck. I should wait for another day to get a reply
     
  4. pwt

    pwt User

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    I wonder what the important information is. Would you be willing to share it, if it's anything that might benefit all of us?
     
  5. hapless

    hapless Guest

    (Sorry, I should have mentioned this in my last reply.)

    After I submitted my first few transcripts, CW temporarily reduced my PPT qualification to 79. I contacted CW the next day, and learned that this reduction is part of some kind of normal administrative procedure that applies to most newcomers.

    (I don't know why they don't give any warning before doing this, and I don't know why there has to be a delay before they let the concerned worker know what's going on.)
     
  6. pwt

    pwt User

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    I bet they do that to keep new transcribers who are really awful at the job (or cheaters/scammers) from taking too many HITs until CW knows they can be trusted to do the job. Let's them see a few examples of your work before they decide to let you run wild.

    What they should do is email you about it when it happens. CrowdSource is great about using email to keep in touch with Turkers. CW should do the same.
     
    #6 pwt, Jun 24, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 24, 2012
  7. melissa71642

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    That's exactly why they do it. They don't want people that obviously have no clue what they're doing or trying to scam their hits by putting 2 people talking in the transcription box (yes, I've seen this happen more times than I can remember) and expecting to get paid to do that. If you have the ability to do the work and do it right, including running a spell check, then they'll up you raise your PPT score back up but if you turn in something that looks like gobbledy gook and has far too many spelling errors, they won't. :)
     
  8. pwt

    pwt User

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    Crazy little work to do the past few days. I'm almost desperate enough to dive into the backlog of transcripts to edit. There has to be over a hundred of them.

    I'm not sure though. I can never seem to get better than 8s on my own transcripts, what business do I have trying to improve transcripts by others?

    Still, it's the only work CW has up.

    Does anyone who does edits here have advice for a regular transcriber but first time editor?
     
  9. Shaman

    Shaman Member

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    All the "Improve a Transcript" HITs that I've seen today required a PPT of 90. My PPT is still at 85, so I can't do any of them. Is your PPT over 90, pwt? If it is, and all that's missing is confidence, I think you should go ahead and take the plunge.
     
  10. pwt

    pwt User

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    My PPT is 93. I just barely clear the bar. I've heard the PPT score doesn't top out at 100, so I have no idea how far from the top I even am. I only know how far I am from the lower bar, and for edits, it's uncomfortably close.

    But I did just see a dozen or more HITs posted by CW in the last 10 minutes. I'm about to go try to grab a few. I suggest others do the same.

    Watch their Twitter feed if you aren't already. Its kind of pointless when there are already 100+ transcription HITs to do, but when they empty out, it's gold for knowing when new jobs are posted.
     
  11. Shaman

    Shaman Member

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    Well, the highest PPT you need is 99. When you reach that, you can do their expedite HITs that pay $1 (or more?) per audio minute. If the PPT goes beyond that, I don't know.

    You said you can never seem to get better than 8s, so I'm surprised to know that your PPT is 93. I thought getting 9s on a regular basis was necessary to go above 90.

    These 8s that you keep getting, is that something that started happening recently? I ask because I also seem to be stuck on 8s. My last ten transcripts were all 8s. Many of them got an initial grade of 9, but then the "mTurk Editor" downgraded them to 8. And what's really annoying is that no reason is given! What's up with that?

    I don't know if they beefed up the grading process or if I've just been sucking lately, but I sure do miss getting a string of 9s. :(
     
  12. pwt

    pwt User

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    I get about 5-10% 9s and the rest 8s. My PPT hasn't budged at all since last fall. Not even a single point. Just... 93. Sometimes I think that because I've got records with CW going back to 2007 that maybe my record in their database is in some old format, and my PPT isn't even being updated anymore.

    I keep meaning to ask them about it.

    Nope, I've always been an 8 guy. There was an odd period a week or two ago where my rate jumped to 50% 9s, but I've since fallen back to almost entirely 8s.

    I have no explanation for that. In fact, I looked at the final transcripts for that period and found that one of my 9s had just as many changes as an 8 did. It made no sense to me.

    Now I have seen that. I had quite a few recent transcripts graded as 9 by "Violet" that were paid as 8s. Very frustrating.

    Sometimes I think editors are pretending to improve 9s from 8s to 9s because it pays them better. But I have no evidence of that. I think many of the edits in final transcripts on 8s are *very* subjective. But what can you do? If the editors are hurting transcribers because it pays *them* better by paying us less, ... there isn't anything we can do.
     
  13. melissa71642

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    Sometimes I think editors are pretending to improve 9s from 8s to 9s because it pays them better. But I have no evidence of that. I think many of the edits in final transcripts on 8s are *very* subjective. But what can you do? If the editors are hurting transcribers because it pays *them* better by paying us less, ... there isn't anything we can do.

    This isn't true because edits pay just as a transcript does and moving the grades up or down has absolutely no effect on the pay. The improve a transcript, which I think are the new grading hits because I can't find the first approve a transcription hit, is a different story. The improver can put down that a 9 was really a 7 and that will make their money go up but if they get caught cheating that way, CW has and will ban them from doing any more of their work.

    The reason why you guys aren't getting reasons is even though editors leave a reason in the notes box, those are not passed on, and I agree that they should be but they never have been. There are a few editors that are downgrade happy and Violet is one of them along with a few others. You can always tell when new editors jump in because you can go from getting 9s for 2 years straight and in the span of one week with one new editor, all work that you have done was marked down to an 8 and NOTHING is being changed all because (I had to email CW about this recently) "That's what other editors were doing to me, so I thought it was okay to downgrade even if one thing was changed." Luckily, that editor was told to stop and did stop :)
     
  14. pwt

    pwt User

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    That must be what I was thinking of, because I know I've seen editing related HITs that pay bonuses for improving a transcript by a certain grade. I also noticed that people doing them are required to leave explanations/feedback.

    I seem to remember being very unhappy with her grades either last year or in 2007 (I briefly did CW in 2007 and then came back to it last fall.) But on her behalf, I've had some of these lately too:

    If I had gotten the grade she gave me for those three HITs, I would have made $7.92 instead of $6.60. That's not nothing.

    Or even this, which I just noticed while looking up the stuff I just pasted:

    What the heck? I might have to complain about that one. I hate complaining about what I feel are unfair grades because I feel like they must have been justified and that I am still making mistakes that I shouldn't be.

    But that's just too odd to ignore.

    That's amazing. I'm jealous. My grade 8s add up to $111.07 this year, and could have been $133.29 if I could be consistently that good.

    Well done.

    I wish I knew what I was doing wrong that you're not. But I swear, whenever I review the final transcripts on CW's site, very few of the edits make sense to me. They all seem so damn subjective. Put a comma here, delete a comma there. Delete "like" in one place and delete it from another. Tell me there are missing words when there aren't any. Tell me there are grammar errors when there aren't any, or just a few.

    I try never to think about it because it just makes me want to not work for CW anymore. I just accept that no matter how hard I try or how long I take to edit myself, I will never get a 9 on purpose.

    Ever.

    And it's not like I quit trying. There was a span between June 7th and the 13th where I had eight 9s and just 3 8s. I actually started trying *harder* to make a perfect transcript after that, but since that run, I've only had a single 9, along with 19 8s.

    Maddening. Like I said, I try to just forget that bonuses even exist and just assume the base pay is actually 2.5x, and pretend they are just fixed pay HITs.
     
  15. pwt

    pwt User

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    Remember maddening? 3/5 HITs were 9s last night/this morning.

    You're a dirty tease, Casting Words.
     
  16. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Yeah, I'm new but I've already started thinking along those lines.

    I assume that the top grade may be a "moving target." When I do get a 9, I anticipate the possibility of an unexplained downgrade.

    If I get a 7 for good work and if the grade seems demonstrably unfair, then I'll contact CW. (If they leave the grade unchanged and don't even bother to reply, well, too bad.)
     
    #16 hapless, Jun 26, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 26, 2012
  17. hapless

    hapless Guest

    I took another look at my few 9's, and (I have to admit) some of them should've been graded 8.

    Today I got an 8 for a tiny transcript of about, oh, 130 words or so. The audio was perfectly clear. I'll be interested to examine the full edit to see what was changed.

    That was a litmus test for me. If I can't nail a 9 on such an easy transcript, I almost certainly won't achieve many 9's for more difficult work.
     
  18. nobody

    nobody User

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    I just wanted to thank you for posting here. Your posts have been really helpful.

    After taking a break from CW, I tried some of their HITs again last week. I got some really great feedback. Although I got a lot of 8's, the final edits had few changes. Some of them had no changes. :D

    When SpeechInk ran out of HITs last weekend, I guess it wasn't such a bad thing after all. Anyway, thanks again!
     
  19. Whimsy

    Whimsy User

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    I'm happy I'm not the only one confused by the 9s that go to an 8. That happened on a few of mine...and I only have about 9 transcripts with CW under my belt. My PPT was raised to 90 so I'm happy to finally be home after a weekend away from the laptop. I'm going to probably still stick with audio that I can't screw up too bad.

    After SpeechInk's verbatim hits, CW is a wonderful change of pace. And whoever (in another thread) gave the tip about looking at your fingers when you type --- THANK YOU! After 20 years of not looking it's a treat and really does help. Now to figure out a way to build my own autocorrect dictionary and remember how I've set it.
     
  20. hapless

    hapless Guest

    I'm quite surprised to see that CW has already raised my PPT to 92. Of the transcripts I've turned in over my first month, fewer than 30% scored a 9. Although I've put in an honest effort on every transcript, I certainly did not anticipate such a rapid increase in qualification.
     

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