Franklin Harrell

I did a limited number of these hits yesterday, maybe 25 or so email and about 50 names. There were a couple of hits in which 1 out of 5 audio segments didn't show up at all, but I annotated that in the comments.

For what it's worth, I think the comments here make a lot of sense. A qualification would be a good idea, as would be soft blocking workers when necessary. Names are going to be difficult - in email yesterday I mentioned that trying to differentiate "Neff" from "Ness" even with spelling in rough audio was a difficult proposition at best. You and your client will have to decide how you want to proceed with that. For that matter, emails can be difficult when spelling isn't confirmed and we're left to guess it. But, as footballchick said, 10 out of 1500 really isn't all that bad.

A little side suggestion - I would have appreciated having an individual comment section along with each snippet, instead of just the one at the end of the hit. Scrolling back and forth and annotating comments for which audio would occasionally run my time way too close to the clock limit.

In any case, I'm really glad to see this conversation. Thanks, Franklin.

 

I'm a bit slow since I've just come from an overnight stay at my in-laws but I wanted to welcome you to the forum considering I was one of the ones who emailed you yesterday [about duplicate names].

It is great to hear your thoughts on blocking people, I do have no problem if people are submitting horrid work but I think it's nice to have some sort of system in place where a requester can say 'Hey you're really not doing this task right' and maybe offer ways to improve it or just say please don't do anymore.

I only did around 50 yesterday but I am always overly cautious with new requester's even when the task is something I really enjoy like transcription. I am not sure how it looks from a requester's side but I believe you can message individual workers through the dashboard the same way we can contact requesters? Also, I imagine this might be a pain in the arse and more work than you're interested in doing.. but if we were to message you with our individual worker ID would you be able/willing to tell us how we did?

In any case I will stop rambling haha and say welcome to the forum again, it's good to have you here. I'm looking forward to the next batch of HITs you put up.

 

First of all I'd like to say thank you Franklin for coming and talking to us. It's the mark of a good requester to want to build that communication.

I did between 20 and 30 of yours yesterday and started running into problems on the name ones. It turns out my internet was being spotty so I had a couple that abandoned and 1 where I only got 1 of the audio files to load, but i'm pretty sure I returned that one. Anyway, there could be several reasons for a person to have an issue that is on their end and not yours and most of the seasoned workers around here would rather return a hit then send you something that it's up to quality standards.
Does your system use a certain type of java or flash? Is there something we should be checking to make sure is up to date? IF so maybe you could put that at the beginning of the instructions. Also I had the same questions as the other ones before. Something else I noticed was of the ones I did I can recall at least 5 different audios where I only got half of the answer rather than the whole thing. That means the person would say JaneDoe@ then the audio would end, well i can't enter that now because I don't know if it's gmail, yahoo, hotmail or an email provider. Another time I had a name of Ruku and one of Yuro, After I submitted Yuro I thought was it supposed to be Euro? That's about the time I gave up on the name ones.

These hits were enjoyable and not too difficult, the hardest part was the foreign ones with no spelling out and the cut off parts. Any other problems I had were on my end and really had nothing to do with your hits.
Anyway, thanks again for chatting with us.
CWE

 

This is where a phonetic alphabet would really come in handy but not everyone is familiar with them. Of course any sort of phonetic would work it doesn't have to be Military. Of course then we may run into the problem where someone has an unusually long name/email so if your email address is kookaburragumdrop@hotmail.com are you really going to have that spelled out phonetically in 20 seconds?

I think that made sense LOL

 

I must say I am glad I joined the forum to ask your input -- your comments have been very helpful. I might not be able to reply to all of the threads, but I have read them and have taken your feedback into consideration. Contacting workers individually through the MT interface is extremely tedious -- I have to manage the HITs individually (several thousand) and click on each one before I can see the worker ID I am searching for. Unfortunately, this just isn't going to work for me. So, if I reject your work and you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email me. I am going to have my programmer take another look at the keywords we are using to generate the audio files and adjust the time elapsed before and after them...maybe that will help. I will also be more clear in my instructions and will provide examples when I upload more HITs. Most of you know where/how to find me, I think someone posted my requester ID in a previous thread. If not, my email address is fharrell@primedia.com. If you have specific questions or comments in general, do not hesitate to ask...I am usually rather quick to reply to all email that I receive. I am going to upload the approvals for the email HITs shortly, then begin reviewing the phone ones. Saving names for later...best for last, I guess! --fh

 

It made a lot of sense, and I agree. My mom was a long-lines operator with the phone company way back in the day, so I'm very used to spelling with S as in Sam, F as in Frank, etc. Ultimately, though, it comes down to what Franklin and his client want to or are able to provide, what they define as acceptable, and how well we're able to provide an appropriate work product.

 

One more thing I just recalled about the names HIT.
I had several instances where I wrote down an answer like Name1/Name2,
because 2 names were spoken and it wasn't clear who the target was.
(Not including the name of the representative obviously)
It's one more thing to add to future instructions, whether to write both down,
choose one, or have a scroll-down option for 'more than 1 name'.

Thanks for replying to everything!



*And an update, all of the email HITs I did (82) just got approved

 

Ok, so I returned 18 email HITs to be worked on by others, but because I did my approval offline, I wasn't given the option to change the instructions or time allowed. Hopefully, one of you will pick them up and will understand exactly how to do them. More to come later.

 

Did about 10 of the email ones, all of them got approved just now .

 

Just finished reviewing the phone HITs, and the results were a little better. I should have rejected 129 out of 1108, but this time I accepted results that were 1 digit off. It was interesting, the same control values were missed many times, leading me to believe those particular controls should be reevaluated. Of the 20 that I am rejecting, some answers were left completely blank with no comments or audio quality value chosen and the others were just too far off from the control value to accept it. Name results are forthcoming.

 

Andy -- you might want to check out Frankie_Stein. Not sure if he maybe accidentally replied to the wrong thread, but his reply on page 1 makes it sound like he is trying to stir things up by posing as me.

--Franklin

 

Second that, it's important to share your experiences.
Only takes a minute to sign up.

 

All of my names one approved, just waiting on the email ones now. I will definitely be leaving a review on TO for these.

 

This one might have worked out for you, but watch out for the next one, and btw I didn't do that shabby yesterday without taking the no TO risk like you did, = )

 

I have to ask -- what is TO?