Gotta watch out for those. Apparently, short paragraphs are preferred here in CW-land.Originally Posted by Whimsy
I once got a 7 for failing to split two already-very-short paragraphs into even shorter ones. (That, and missing a comma on one sentential adverb.)
On that one, the turker editor (who obviously has a sense of humor) wrote: "Proofreadcarefully." [sic] ;-)
My next transcript, however, was, in his view, almost "pervect." [sic]
(Give me a 7 for too many commas in that last sentence.)
Yo, chillax.... I felt so bad for grading Hapless down for the double words and I felt I'd been nit picky afterLack of self confidence showing there maybe
I already tol'ja I'm cool with your edits (and grades). It's all good. (-;
Just a cautionary note:
As you can see from the "http", those worker pages, and the support site, apparently are not secured with the HTTPS protocol.
I complained to CW last month. They already use HTTPS on their customer logins, IIUC; so I don't know why they can't be bothered use HTTPS on the worker side. (It can't be too difficult; 'this is not rocket science.')
(CW is not alone in this. I plan to complain to another well-known crowdsourcing company for a similar reason. That other company angers me because they display an explicit indication that both their customer and worker logins are secured, when in fact the latter is not properly secured.)
BTW, you can also find your PPT under the Qualifications tab in M-Turk itself. (Note that M-Turk does use HTTPS, of course!)
Last edited by hapless; 07-24-2012 at 05:43 PM.
Yes, just do more transcripts (no stress, just proceed at your own pace), cross your fingers, and check the PPT occasionally (every couple of weeks or so) to see if it gradually starts to move up.
I've been at this for just over a month, working at a slow pace. I get mostly 8's (some of which I've disputed). For reasons unknown to me, already they have boosted my PPT to 94, which is more than I think I deserve at this point. I can't complain about having access to more jobs.
I understand that some of us have been working steadily for a significant amount of time without any recent boost in PPT. If I were in that situation, I wouldn't hesitate to submit a friendly support request asking CW to review your work and see if they're willing to bump up your score. It can't hurt to just ask (and there is no shame in asking).
"Whoa, Nelly."
I wrote: "... For reasons unknown to me, already they have boosted my PPT to 94, which is more than I think I deserve at this point."
I checked again, today.
It's 96.
OK, that is crazy? IMO, there is no way I deserve a 96 after just over a month of careful but slow-paced work.
As I said, I get mostly 8's. I would judge that my work is slow but reasonably good in terms of accuracy. Regardless, it seems to me, getting to the stratosphere (96!) should've required more time and more transcripts. (IMHO)
Is the PPT scoring process fair? I don't know, I have no information about how it works behind-the-scenes.
Maybe those 9s given, but paid as 8s, helped? I have done many, many Improve jobs and got all but 2 of them to a 9. I wish wish wish wish I could get a new laptop so I could do longer transcription jobs. I've come to really enjoy doing this type of work. Cw customer support has always been kind in their replies, too. Of course, I don't fire off angry emails either. Well, mnot to someone paying me money at least
My jump to 96 surprised me, too. I am thinking it will help promote more confidence in those grading, too. Fingers crossed.
Eta - one of my previous posts in this thread is a reply from cw on how ppt is determined, from their standpoint.
BTW, I assume everyone here is familiar with the worker information pages at turkers.castingwords.com.
The first time I visited the "Live CW Hits" page, I didn't realize that only base-level jobs are initially displayed under "Audio Transcription." At first I didn't realizethat we have to click other headings to see the higher-paying transcription jobs that require an elevated PPT score.
Those headings (when present) include e.g. "Express Transcription," "Expedited Transcription," and (in the "Other" section) "Difficult Audio" and "Diff Audio Expr Trans." (and of course other headings for editing and grading jobs).
(With luck, sometimes you may find a "difficult" transcription job that is not so difficult. I'm doing one right now.)
Last edited by hapless; 07-24-2012 at 07:55 PM. Reason: Yes I know that you know that I know that you already knew all of that.
Hahaha I like your edit.
Even if we do know that, it's good to put it in writing for others that come along in the future. That's the same reason why I don't do much mturk-talkimg through private message. Let everyone know the process, the tips, the frustrations. There's so much good information in these threads.
I'm also grateful I'm not the only one currently working with them.
Edit: sorry for typos. I'm typing with my thumbs
Thanks. I had a few more come in like that. Same HITs, but a slightly higher premium ($1.09 instead of $0.98) that I had done much later in the morning. Of the 4 later ones, two came back as 9s, one an 8, and one hasn't been approved yet. The 8 was an auto-approval I noticed, all the rest were not.
It added up very nicely for me for the day. The 9s could have be $22.60 as all 8s. Instead they ended up being $27.12, for a $32.50 day overall. Very nice, especially with all the 2-3 day spans with little to no work at all this summer.
I don't think I'll ever top today. My best day with CW before this was June 22nd, $18.63.
Those Bulk Express jobs are sweet.
Virtually all of my 9s today were given an 8 by Turker graders. I get the feeling everyone ignores them these days. I've had too many Turker 9s and paid 8s, and now today, too many paid 9s and Turker 8s, for them to have any meaning.On another note...lol I was looking at the details for one of my transcriptions that got a 9. One of the graders gave me a 7!
I've been doing more verbatim than ever before, and it seems to be helping my grades lately. Not 100% verbatim, but more than I was doing. I was doing a lot of cleanup before to make the transcript the best possible product for the customer, and I guess that's wrong. This guy in the Bulk Express HITs last night/this morning spoke pretty good English for someone who didn't have it as a first language (his syntax was great) but he missed obvious things for a natural language speaker. Missing an "s" for plural words, adding an "s" to make something plural when it shouldn't be, mostly things like that.I'm wondering if they were grading with a verbatim ear?
(I think the Turker giving me 8s on them was in my old mindset, wanting me to fix that stuff.)
I transcribed what he said 90% of the time and only added a "the" and whatnot here and there, to make it more readable. Those were that big load of 9s I just got.
It reminded me of a HIT last year where I got feedback (after I asked in the comment area) from CastingWords saying "ethic should be ethnic."
It was an African American woman talking about college basketball, and honestly, her English wasn't so great. In fact, it was far worse than the artist I was doing this morning who clearly didn't speak English as his first language, but had been speaking it for many, many years. But for some reason, while doing work this morning, that feedback kept coming back to me and hanging around in the back of my mind. "ethnic should be ethnic".
CW really does want something as close to verbatim as possible, with only very obvious problems fixed, and fillers removed (sometimes).
Anyway, it's something to think about.
This hasn't been edited yet, but it's one of my 9s from today:There have been a couple of jobs lately where someone has an almost full sentence before completely changing direction. If it can't be worked in, I take it out.
Even if the first part wasn't necessary as context for the first, I'd have left it in anyway. These days, I'll only leave out a short and utterly meaningless false start. Here's another 9:For a ball, some people like to...You could add a highlight, like this, to give it one extra push forward to make it look three dimensional.
My old mindset says that's very debatable. You could delete that first sentence and the second one would make perfect sense. It adds nothing to the transcript. But I left it anyway, under my new mindset of "ethnic should be ethnic", type what you hear unless it's a problem. You're not editing, you're transcribing.OK, let me just take a look and see areas I want to...Just add some more grass to the field.
Today, anyway, that's worked very well for me.
The style guide says to do that, but I've had editors put them right back in. And I've gotten a lot of 9s today with filler words to begin a sentence and paragraph (I've seen editors put them in to begin paragraphs, per the audio), and a lot of 8s this year with all of them taken out. So now I'm leaving some in and taking some out. I leave in one that makes the transcript flow better, based on a comment from CW a week or two ago that my paragraphs sucked ass (not their words), and that they should "flow together", not be chopped up into perfect little paragraphs that carefully meet the character limits.Filler words not taken out.
The style guide says to be as close to verbatim as possible while taking out fillers. That tells me (now) that not *all* fillers need to be taken out. The primary goal is "as close to verbatim as possible", subject to all the other rules.
Right now, my new policy is to ignore feedback about fillers and look only at the edits and final grade I get paid for, and only then, look at what a majority of the edits have done. Not just one.
I got dinged for that by CW once. A woman was trying to give a total count of animals she has on her farm, and she was very quietly counting out loud, and then she gave the total. But all she was doing was adding out loud. She wasn't saying "five chickens, three ducks, .." under her breath, she was saying "15, 18, 22....35", and 35 would have been the total. Transcribing her counting out loud added nothing to the transcript and shouldn't have been in there, but CW wanted it anyway and told me so in feedback.Essential speech not transcribed. (as opposed to filler words that don't add anything, words that enrich, change, whatever is being said)
Oh well. Live and learn.
I've been doing "alright" instead of "all right" lately. I'm getting annoyed about it, too. Yes, I understand that it's in the style guide. But 99% of people write "alright" and "alright" is a valid English word. It's not even one of those British English but not American English words. It's a valid word. I get that CW prefers one over the other, but frankly, CW's preference is stupid.Although, to be fair, I am always letting my fingers away with me and typing 'an' as 'and' - spell check no use there either!
It's also on the mTurk website, under your assigned qualifications (apparently you can see the last date it was updated there) and on all CW transcription HITs that have a PPT requirement:
Haplass,
I did some editing and final approval the last few days. I rarely do this type work, but there has been NOTHING but crap to work on the last few days.
I remember saying to up a 94 to a 96, not sure if it was you. I rarely do that when I'm working, but I thought the few transcripts that person worked on looked pretty good, so I suggested to up their PPT. When we approve final transcripts, we don't always know who they are for. If they have registered with a name, that shows, if not, it's just their number.
Also, my CW name is different from my name here. When I started, I didn't want other workers to identify the dumbass that was just starting out.
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