CrowdSurfWork Platform

CrowdSurfWork Platform FAQ

1. When can I expect to be paid?
ANSWER: All regular base payments and bonuses for work performed on the CrowdSurfWork Platform are paid every Monday, Wednesday and Friday payments are credited to you Mechanical Turk account.

  • Monday payment reflects earnings from Friday through Midnight Sunday PST
  • Wednesday payment reflects earnings from Monday through Midnight Tuesday PST
  • Friday payment reflects earnings from Wednesday through Thursday Midnight PST

Back to the top

2. How do I sign up to work on the CrowdSurfWork Platform?
ANSWER: We invite our top workers from Mechanical Turk to work on our private platform, CrowdSurfWork. While our criteria for promoting workers can change, generally we require between 500-600 or more approved Transcription and Review HITs on MT with an average score of 3.7 or greater. Working on the CrowdSurfWork Platform does not mean you leave MT, it just means you get access to more work in addition to HITs on MT. We use CrowdSurfWork to offer other task types like Full Text Review or Quality Control Tasks.
Back to the top

3. I have made an account on CrowdSurfWork, now what?
ANSWER: CrowdSurf will set up your account and send you an introductory email to explain everything! Only CrowdSurf administrators can grant qualifications and add you to our teams, so making your own Crowd Virtualizer (CV) account doesn’t allow you to access any new CrowdSurf tasks.
Back to the top

4. Why are the payment and reject numbers in Crowd Virtualizer different then on the daily CrowdSurf worker spreadsheet?
ANSWER: Please only rely on the number on our  Daily Worker Feedback Spreadsheet. Our payment system is not connected to the Crowd Virtualizer and we keep track of your rejects and of your payments in our separate system.
Back to the top

5. How do I get feedback for work completed on Crowd Virtualizer?
ANSWER: Oops! You can check out Daily Worker Feedback Spreadsheet. We are constantly adding tabs to this. However our ultimate goal is to create a worker portal where you will be able to get feedback on each task that got rejected, work on training material and see near real time data on your payments and your quality scores.  Please bear with us until we have that portal completed.   In the meantime please use your CV ID and CMD+F to find your data on the spreadsheets. The spreadsheet has the most up to date data on your performance and it will be used to make payments. Email us at support@crowdsurfwork.com with your CV ID for more specific questions.
Back to the top

6. What do levels in CrowdSurfWork mean?
ANSWER: Each different level of CrowdSurf workers completes a different step in our transcribing process. You can see an explanation of CrowdSurf levels here.
Back to the top

7. What are the Special Group and Special Handling qualifications and how do I receive them?
ANSWER: We do have multiple Special Handling Queues which can encompass a wide variety of tasks.  The tasks and queues can change, but two queues we maintain regularly are:

  1. CRITICAL QUEUE – This queue is designed for quick turnaround media, and needs to be completed quickly and accurately!  Use these links for information on Critical Guidelines, Scoring Criteria, and Payment Information
  2. SPEAKER ID 2 QUEUE – This queue is used for adding speaker ID labels to specific jobs with lots of dialogue.  Use these links to access Speaker ID Guidelines I, Speaker ID Guidelines II,  Speaker ID Guidelines III and payment information

Here the requirements to become part of these Special Handling groups:

1. CRITICAL QUEUE

  • At least Level 5 Worker
  • Proven record of high performance in timing as well as in Full Text Review
  • Proven record of high work speeds (Desired speed is between 1.8 and 4x the media length)
  • Ability to comply 100% with the Critical Guidelines

This includes our regular guidelines but especially the following things:

  •       – Look up names of cities/countries/special terms/reporters/ leaders of the world
  •       – Re-time (not FLAG!) off timing
  •       – Insert Music or Sound tokens when needed
  •       – Removes stutters, and repetitive words (uh and um can be neglected)

NOTE: If any of the above criteria is disregarded by the worker, we will send feedback. If worker  repeatedly does not follow the guidelines, we will revoke qualifications for this queue or others.

2. SPEAKER ID 2 QUEUE

  • At least Level 4 Worker
  • Proven record of high performance  in Full Text Review
  • Ability to comply 100% with the Special Guidelines

This includes our regular guidelines but especially the following things:

  •       – Insert the correct Speaker ID or names if speakers are introduced
  •       – Don’t miss Speaker IDs or insert too many
  •       – OPTIONAL: For those that wish to go above and beyond, the worker fixes mistakes that s/he comes across while working on inserting the Speaker IDs (unless specifically instructed not to make additional edits)

NOTE: If any of the above criteria is being disregarded by the worker we will send feedback. If it keeps happening repeatedly we reserve the right to revoke qualifications for this queue or others
Back to the top

8. How long does it take to get promoted to a higher level?
ANSWER: It depends on your performance as well as on our immediate need to get more workers for the top tasks.  If you work a lot of tasks with consistent high quality we are likely to upgrade you quickly as long as we have the need for it.  Please wait for an invitation, we will proactively contact you regarding higher level work.
Back to the top

9. Why was I downgraded and were some of my qualifications revoked?
ANSWER: If you believe you were downgraded in error please email support@crowdsurfwork.com and provide your CV ID and your MT ID.  We usually do not revoke qualifications without providing a warning prior to the removal of the qualifications.  If you have not received any warnings please email us. If you have received warnings and you believe your quality has improved but we still revoked the qualification please email us and we can provide specific examples and evaluate your case.
Back to the top

10. I don’t want to work on that task type again, Im afraid of getting my qualifications revoked?
ANSWER:  Please do not be afraid to get your qualifications revoked for no reason. Before we revoke qualifications completely there has to be plenty of evidence of sloppy work.  We work hard to protect our workers and uphold our quality standards.

Please be proactive and email us if you had any difficulties with any given task and you’re afraid of not being able to comply with the above requirements.  We believe everybody deserves a second chance and more often than not we even give a third chance.  We also evaluate our workers on a case by case basis. This means, for example, if you have delivered high volume with consistently high quality for a long time and then have some rejects due to technical issues we will investigate and take these factors into consideration.  In the end, we understand that no one can ever be 100% perfect, not even us!
Back to the top

11. What do qualification values mean?
ANSWER: The values don’t really matter, the important thing to know is:

  • A qualification with the value 0 means you do not have the qualification and can’t work that specific queue. (Even if it looks like we’ve added a qualification, if the score is 0, you will not be able to work those tasks)
  • A qualification with the value 1 or higher means you do have the qualification.

Sometimes you may receive email notifications in Crowd Virtualizer telling you that certain qualifications have been assigned to you. This is normal. Once in a while we use certain queues to do some internal test jobs or occasionally we will reset qualifications for internal purposes.  As long as you can keep working on the tasks that you are qualified for according to your level don’t worry.

If there has been a qualification assigned to you with the value 1 or higher and you have not received any information regarding how to work that queue please email us.  If we revoked a qualification from you by either taking it away completely or by assigning the value 0 to your qualification without prior warning, preventing access to your regular work queues, where you have performed work before, please email us as well.
Back to the top

12. How do I get updates about new tasks on the CrowdSurfWork Platform?
ANSWER: We communicate with our CrowdSurfWork workers through level specific lists. Please be sure that you are subscribed to these CrowdSurf newsletters so that you can get the most up to date news and bonus offers from CrowdSurf.  To stay up to date with volumes feel free to check our website, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.
Back to the top