Mechanical Turk Transcribers FAQ

Last updated April 28, 2007

How can I become a transcriber?

We post all of our work at Mechanical Turk (mturk.com). There are currently three ways to get paid. You get paid either via a transfer to your US bank account; you can receive Amazon.com store credit; workers in India have the option of receiving bank checks denominated in Indian Rupees.
1. Sign up at mturk.com.
2. Request the PPT (Transcriber) Qualification. All you have to do is check a box and we give you a score high enough to start on some work with.
3. Now you are good to go. Here's a search for all of our transcription HITs. Find one that looks interesting, accept it (make sure you hit the Accept Button), and get to work!
What are turkers?
Turkers are the (not-so) secret ingredient of CastingWords.com. They do the transcribing and editing. They get to work from anywhere they want with a computer and Internet connection, and on their own time. No obligations.

Here are links to our three major qualifications:
PPT (Transcriber) Qualification
Editor Qualification
Unique Id Qualification
What is the Unique Id Qualification?
This qualification gives you an id unique to you. You can use this qual to accept certain HITs, and also, you can request your MTurk Worker Id using your Unique Id Qualification Score.

I want feedback on my HITs!
You can get feedback now. Go to turkers.castingwords.com and plug in your Worker Id. You will see notes and grades for your assignments. Note however, that we take turker-suggested grades with a grain of salt.
$%@!# turker gave me a low grade!
Some people are harsher than others. And yes sometimes they are bad graders. We are going to have a grader qualification soon to help solve the second problem

I need longer to work on this HIT - is there any way to do this?
Yes, you can request an extension from us. Request an Extension. You absolutely have to do this before your HIT expires. We will give you a token. Submit this as the HIT answer on MTurk right away. Then when you are done with the transcript, you just submit it to us at the castingwords site. This is great for when MTurk puts out downtime notices, or if you have flaky internet, or know you need a little extra time.

If you are down to the wire, just put what you have in with a comment saying you will email us by such-and-such time with the rest of the transcription.

%$#@t!!! I just did a long transcription and it expired before I could submit it. Help!
Unfortunately, if the HIT expires, it gets added back to the pool of HITs - and someone else can take it. If it is that close to expiring, perhaps you should submit what you have, add a comment that you need a little more time, and then send an email with the rest
#@!!$%! I just did a long transcription and then I accidentally submitted a blank answer instead.
Email us the answer, and the URL of the audio. If you do that right away, we won't reject it and won't knock your score down low because we think you are a cheater.

What is your privacy policy?
You can read the Privacy Policy. Basically, I only use your email for essential communications with you. I will not sell or share it.