I just did a thorough search on Redwood in mturk forum but couldn't find a thread that addresses the doubts faced by workers when doing Redwood HITs. When it comes to communication with the requester, Redwood is the worst requester... They haven't responded to even a single enquiry I've made. So I thought to create a thread here and discuss it out. For me, I haven't got a single rejection from Redwood till now. But for some reason, I think what I'm doing is wrong. They do not have clear instructions in their style guide for their transcription hits. And when I do the review HITs, the lack of clarity in instructions is obvious. The first and foremost confusion is about the numbers, whether to write it in words or just as numbers? Please share here how you are doing it.
Also, if words like 'wanna', 'gonna' is spoken, do I have to convert it into "going to" or "want to"?
Ok - I've talked with Redwood about this before months ago. "wanna" and "gonna" are OK if that's what was spoken. If it's numbers (you'll run into this a lot with the Sports talks) " 5 and 0 " is OK, and preferred over "five and zero " The biggest thing is to leave out ummsss... stuttering, etc. They don't want it verbatim.
May I ask what you got rejected for? Redwood is one of my fave requesters (Or WAS, til Mturk booted me Since I apparently have lots of time on my hands I'm free to help you.
Sorry for your loss. And thanks for replying. Like I said, I haven't got any rejection. I posted this thread just to make sure what I'm doing is right. I'm a bit surprised though, that they've actually communicated with you.
Oh I guess I read it wrong. I thought you said you hadn't been rejected until now. I think I emailed them twice when I first started. Got replies fast that were very friendly. But, actually, I did email them a couple of months ago and never got a reply. Sounds like they either had recent staff reductions, or changes to their customer service if it's no good now.
Another thing that concerns me a lot is when doing the "Review transcription" hits, some words will be missed out completely by the transcriber. Where should we click to indicate that the word is missing?... In the next correctly transcribed word? Or we should simply ignore the missing words?
Here's what I did. I grabbed the first thing I saw and read it ...purposely stumbling and adding words not to be transcribed. AS FAR AS I KNOW, this is how Redwood wants it done. They've actually sent me bonuses before for me "excellent work". (2 cents, but hey) OK - you can listen to this very short clip of me reading something. (no download - it just plays). Don't laugh - I'm talking this way on purpose! http://vocaroo.com/i/s0xSkaAGHMou Here's how I'd transcribe it: I like to give these gift cards to my family for birthdays or Christmas presents. Their eyes just light up just like it was fifty dollars in cash. That's where the numbers thing gets tricky, since the words "fifty dollars" were spoken, it's different than writing "2012 vs Two thousand twelve". I don't know for sure what they want when it comes to $$ amounts, but I'd write them out to be on safe side.
Actually, that's what I emailed them about! (the one that never got answered) What I've always done is highlight the word before and after the missing word. I don't know their policy on it, but I figured if I do that, it at least shows I'm paying attention. They've never told me otherwise and I've done hundreds that way. I was never clear on what they wanted there, but thats the way I always did it. Also, if someone has typed verbal stumbling or ........ I highlight that, too. Example: You know, um.... it's ummm.....it's a strange thing " I highlight it like this - You know, um.... it's ummm..... it's a strange thing.
Other turkers may have more insight or clearer rules. All I'm going by is my 6 months & over 1,000 HITs I did for them with no complaints. Clearly without MTurk , I now have wayyyy too much time on my hands Hope it helped, though!
When I transcribe the 10 sec ones for Redwood. I don't include any types of verbal stumbling, no ums, ahs, etc. Unlike Claritrans that wants everything, ums, repeated words, etc, when I do Redwood, I try to type it without the verbal stumblings. I guess you could say, I type it as though it were spoken properly. Part of the directions say: - No verbal stumbling. For example, ‘I, I think that you, that you’re a good transcriber’ should be transcribed as, ‘I think that you’re a good transcriber’ - No filler words: such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ and nonverbal descriptions such as ‘cough,' 'music,' or ‘laugh’
The last time I did their review transcription HIT the instructions stated if a word is missing to click the words on either side. I haven't done many of the transcribe ones as i'm unsure if i'd be rejected if someone disagreed with me. Like if I couldn't make out a word and wrote xx but someone else COULD make it out. Do they reject for that?
This is all I could see in the instructions and it DOES NOT mention anything about clicking words on either side : Extra Instructions (read carefully!): Another worker has completed this task. Please review their work and click on any answer that you judge to be wrong, based on your best interpretation of the instructions. For multiple choice and checkboxes, count both wrongly selected and missed answers as wrong. Read the instructions given to the original worker Answers that are clickable will appear raised. If an item is highlighted orange, extra instructions apply. Click on each part that is answered wrong. Transcribe this Audio Clip Listen to the audio clip. If the textbox is empty, please transcribe the English speech to the best of your abilities. If the textbox is full and orange guidelines say, “click on each wrong word,” please click/highlight the wrong words. If the textbox is full and red guidelines say to edit the transcription, fix the errors and make sure that the audio matches the transcription. TRANSCRIBE AND EDIT ACCORDING TO THE FOLLOWING RULES: - One paragraph without quotation marks or speaker names, even if there are multiple speakers. - Standard spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization. No ellipses (…) - If clip begins in the middle of a sentence, the first word should not be capitalized. If it ends in the middle, there should be no period after the last word. - No verbal stumbling. For example, ‘I, I think that you, that you’re a good transcriber’ should be transcribed as, ‘I think that you’re a good transcriber’ - No filler words: such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ and nonverbal descriptions such as ‘cough,' 'music,' or ‘laugh’ - If it’s impossible to understand the words, [xx] should hold their place.* - If it’s impossible to figure out the spelling of a proper noun, (names, places, etc.), the words should be followed with [sp?] - If there are no words to transcribe, or the audio is non-English, leave the box blank. *If you are required to highlight incorrect words and you can understand the words for which there is an [xx], highlight [xx]. If you see the [xx] highlighted, please delete it and transcribe the missing words. But anyways, I'll start doing it in this way. Since both of you have the same opinion, many more out there will also be doing in this way. Redwood has been very lenient these days. They probably won't reject you for those mistakes. But might just give you a soft block...
I kinda wish Redwood would be more specific. A lot of the batch style requesters aren't specific enough in their instructions. Good thing they rarely reject. Anyways, I usually just click both.
But, but... how can you be so sure about that, Maggie. I mean, is redwood associated with CW in any way? I doubt it. There are Claritrans and Speechink and their style guides. According to them, it's 'Okay'.