Casting words sucks?

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

  1. pwt

    pwt User

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    Well I have read that your history with CW can influence your final grade. If you have a long history of 8s, I think that may very well screw you into getting 8s most of the time. Being new, and getting 9s, your history helps you in that area.

    Not sure I like that. Almost makes me want to start another account.
     
  2. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Can't be helped. Sometimes I get a grader who likes my commas and paragraphs and filler-or-not decisions. Then maybe next time, someone else might want to add a comma (or take one out), or split an short paragraph (or move the break), or put back a word (or take one out), or adjust some grammar (or revert a fix), or reinterpret a faintly uttered syllable (which I carefully analyzed) ....

    When I figure the game of 9's may already be lost, sometimes I'll just relax and do it my way. Thus by my own hand I seal my doom.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_E-iY6f58&t=57

    :rolleyes:
     
  3. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Yep, there we go again, a 240-word transcript, easy as pie, Turker grade 9, final grade 8.

    (What does it mean when the approval notes say "Agree with graders..." if the final grade does NOT agree with the original grade?) ;-)
     
  4. pwt

    pwt User

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    Well crap. I just changed my Amazon.com password because Yahoo! leaked a bunch (they were different but it's still good policy) and now I can't log into mTurk.com anymore. No attempts at password reset have worked.

    I've got an email out to mTurk support, but ... ugh. I don't need this right now. I need to be able to use mTurk. >:(
     
  5. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Sorry to hear you're locked out, hopefully support can quickly resolve that.


    I'm about to return a CW HIT, just because I'm getting tired of 8's. ;-)

    It's a very easy, short job with just one clear speaker ... but there's just one 'problem'.

    The job title gives a speaker's name, but the notes give a different name. There seems to be no way to tell for sure which name is correct.

    So there's a 50% chance that I choose the wrong name. (Using a generic name is no good either.)

    It wouldn't surprise me if I'd get an 8 just for choosing the wrong name. ;-)

    Job returned. LOL! :rolleyes:
     
  6. interneteditor

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    I wrote to them about one of those and was given the extra cash. I think they are just being cheap.

    (Reply to Hapless re downgrades)
     
  7. pwt

    pwt User

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    Amazon hasn't gotten back to me, but I changed my Amazon.com password again on a hunch and I'm back in.

    I don't know this for sure, but my guess is that the login scripts for mTurk (via Amazon.com, but not *for* Amazon.com the commercial sales website) are different than for the place you go to buy stuff. So a password that's valid and works for getting into Amazon.com does not necessarily work for mTurk, even though they use the exact same set of credentials for access.

    My new password was 30 characters long and completely random, made up of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and ~!@#$%^&*()_+-={}[]|\:";'<>,.?/

    I guess mTurk doesn't like that. I changed my password back to my simple (and not nearly as secure) six character variety and all is good again.

    Later today I'm going to change it a few more times and see if I can find out what the problem was. I have a feeling that it's the password length. Some sites let you create a password of say 30 characters, but will only accept 15 of them when you're trying to login, and when they don't match, you get the finger. I guess Amazon.com (sales) allows and checks all 30, and Amazon.com/sdfjsdf (mTurk) doesn't.
     
  8. pwt

    pwt User

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    Hey, where do you guys go to contest grades? I've used the email address on the CW Turker's site before but don't often get a reply from there.

    I got an 8 on a transcript that only had three changes in it and I want to complain. One change was "great" to "good" that was hard to hear, and from an interviewer when the notes said that if you can't hear the interviewer, that's fine, just ignore them. (I still think he said good, too.)

    The second change was from "Steelcase" to "Steel Case", which is wrong. Steelcase is a company name and I had it right, they edited an error into the transcript. I specifically told them in a note to that job that the proper name of that company was Steelcase and they did it wrong anyway.

    The third change was splitting a paragraph at the tail end so that it would flow better into the next transcript segment which I couldn't have known or done anything about. That should have been a 9. :(
     
    #68 pwt, Jul 12, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 12, 2012
  9. interneteditor

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    I sent them a message from the status area, from exactly the HIT that was wrong, and they didn't reply but did pay me the extra the next day.
     
  10. hapless

    hapless Guest

    @pwt, welcome to the reality. I often get 8's with minor edits.

    Bummer about the Steelcase thing. I had a brief discussion with CW about compounds in general (not about names but regular compound words). I grit my teeth every time I use one, knowing someone might decide to split it (hello 8).


    btw:
    In one of the latest additions to my growing collection of 8's, all of the "kind of's" got removed, which is fair enough I suppose. But one called something "kind of rotten," now it's just plain "rotten," which IMHO slightly changes the tone in the context of the rest of the statement (debatable perhaps but IMHO).
     
    #70 hapless, Jul 12, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 12, 2012
  11. interneteditor

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    I give your reply a 9 :D
     
  12. hapless

    hapless Guest

    Just finished a 60-word transcript, the shortest and easiest I've ever done.

    I await my 8. :rolleyes:
     
  13. pwt

    pwt User

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    I was doing some ~1 to 1.5 minute clips last night where a guy was painting and barely talking at all. I did one 1:03 clip in 1:05.

    It was just 18 words (I trust CW won't mind):

    Amazingly I've yet to have that approved. If I get an 8, it'll be the easiest 45 cents I've ever made. That's a sweet $27/hr. Too bad there were only 3-4 of them. ;)

    My biggest this month was 1273 words, from the same guy when he was lecturing. He talked fast. Got an 8 on that one, $3.00 for 40.5 minutes worth of work.

    Meh. Win some, lose some.
     
  14. nobody

    nobody User

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    pwt,

    The other night, I almost edited one of your HITs. Like the others, I would have added that comma between the very very. I suck at comma usage, but I do remember what Whimsy mentioned about two adverbs describing an adjective. I returned it because I got back an 8 on an edit right after I started that new one. That's a whole new thread right there. Edits, blech. I've only done a few, but I've done better on edits (mostly 9's) than transcribing. FTW!?

    I finally remembered what I was going to post the other night when I stupidly logged myself out, lol. Like you, I find looking at the final edits extremely frustrating. I rarely do it any more. I keep getting grades of 9, but I get approved and paid for 8's. There are only a couple of graders whose 9's "stick". It may be the time of day I work. I don't know.

    I am starting to suspect that your time with CW has a greater effect on your grades than does the quality. I don't know how else to explain my transcripts with no changes getting 7's and 8's while people who use tons of fillers and freaking % symbols get 9's. I think you're right about them automating too much.

    I'm not bashing them. I think they are great. However, with seemingly few exceptions, they are hard to work for if you're a newbie like me. I sometimes think they are keeping my score low just so they can get those budget HITs transcribed by someone other than the scammers! (I just started grading as well, so I finally figured out what they meant by cheating.)

    Anyway, I recently took a month long break from them because of the frustration. I think it may be time for another one, lol. I'm still applying for other transcription companies, and doing SpeechInk when they post their few decent paying HITs.

    I'll keep checking back with CW, but their dry spell seems to be lasting forever. I refuse to risk my already low, 80-something PPT with crappy audio. Hang in there everybody, those expedited HITs are just around the corner for many of you! :)
     
  15. pwt

    pwt User

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    I guess I'll have to start doing that from now on. But I swear, I've had them removed too.

    Someone either here or on that other forum that I've long since written off because I couldn't access 95% of it said that it's usually like this during the summer. I found CW in 2007 and only did them for a week or so before it seemed like they ran out of work. Looking back at my work log, that was in March of 2007, before the summer. But see, I didn't do any work between March of 2007 and August of last year. I missed last summer and every summer in between. I just have no way to judge that being accurate or not.

    It seems reasonable enough. I've seen a few days this month with 100+ transcription HITs, along with the days of 5-10 that nobody wants. I see 33 right now. Perhaps enough to do some.

    On a completely unrelated note, Amazon replied to my first support request (but not the second when I told them what was wrong after I figured it out myself) when I got locked out of the site and they had this to say:

    No further details. Interesting..
     
  16. hapless

    hapless Guest

    The MT equivalent of: "Thank you for calling. We are experiencing extremely high call volume and unusually long hold times. Your expected wait time is estimated to be -- wow, you don't even want to know..." ;-)
     
  17. hapless

    hapless Guest

    I wish there were a way to rename the thread. I hope no one from CW has been visiting this forum and seeing "Casting Words sucks?" come up so frequently in the Last Post column. :rolleyes:

    (Dear CW, if you are reading this thread, know that we are not really as mean and grumpy as we may sound. Oh sure we may talk about some issues, and we may even vent a little bit from time to time. But we do appreciate you too! If we didn't, we wouldn't be coming back for another and another CW transcription HIT!! Thanks for being there!)
     
    #77 hapless, Jul 12, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 12, 2012
  18. nobody

    nobody User

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    Dear CW,

    What hapless said, lol.

    I thought the same thing, hapless. What if they see this? o_0 They know my real name AND my nobody name!! Well, I've already told them their grading system is still flawed. If they see this thread, I don't think it would surprise them. They have known about their "harsh graders" for years.

    I really don't dislike them. Heck, they pay better than most transcription requesters on mturk (from 20 cents to one dollar per audio minute). That means they are OK in my book. It's just their grading system that sucks.

    And yeah, (<----Aaaack, two fillers!!!!) I may take breaks from them for my sanity, but I will check back. :) Muah, CW!
     
  19. InParentheses

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    Honestly, I don't think the time you've been with them is a big factor. I've only been doing it for less than a month and I get constant 9s. Maybe I'm just a minority in that sense, but I don't know. I don't even expect to see an 8 at all. I've gotten maybe 4 total 8s, the rest 9s.

    I think I may just be lucky enough to have found that balance between when to be verbatim and when to edit. And of course, I learned quickly, that the smaller the paragraphs, the better. :p
     
  20. pwt

    pwt User

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    How many changes to your average final transcript? None? 2-3? I'm super curious now because if your history plays a role in your grade, it'll show if your transcripts end up looking anything like mine. If they look like mine, they do play a role. If they don't, then I'm just 10% inept. :p
     

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