Blanks

[viwiz]

This is what one of the FAQ says in the HELP area:

I completed 20 tasks but my earned balance is still $0.00. Why?

Members are only credited the amount for the tasks completed after they are approved. When you complete a task, the dashboard will show that you have submitted a task and that it is pending approval. Once the task is approved, you will see the credit in the row "Earned" of the dashboard. The time it takes a task to be approved varies depending on the number of moderators working on the approvals, but it should not take more than 24-48 hours.

And this one was interesting as well:

What is the difference between a Task and a Keystroke?

We apologize for the confusion between Tasks and Keystrokes now that we have completed the migration to the SmartCrowd platform. At VirtualBee and KeyForCash, work was recorded in “Keystrokes”, and you were paid out based on how many correct keystrokes you entered. At the SmartCrowd, there are many more types of work available, and all non-Data Entry tasks are paid by the task. For DATA ENTRY ONLY, we still pay based on keystrokes, but the platform is only designed to show you task-based information for compatibility with other work types. The “Keystrokes” counter shown when you are working on a task is comparable to the “Unconfirmed Keystrokes” counter shown on VirtualBee.

At this time, we do not have the ability to show your “Confirmed Keystrokes”, or any other information about your completed work at the Keystroke level. It is very important to understand that all keystrokes in a snippet need to be correct, both in the old systems and in the current one, in order to be paid for them. We have never paid for individual correct keystrokes, unless the confirmed answer is only a single keystroke such as a “Blank”, “0”, etc. Entering “1233” when the snippet reads “1234” will result in no payment. You will be paid for all keystrokes on Tasks (Snippets) with 100% correct characters.

You might have already read this. If not, there it is ...

[LadyMia]

Originally Posted by viwiz

This is what one of the FAQ says in the HELP area:

I completed 20 tasks but my earned balance is still $0.00. Why?

Members are only credited the amount for the tasks completed after they are approved. When you complete a task, the dashboard will show that you have submitted a task and that it is pending approval. Once the task is approved, you will see the credit in the row "Earned" of the dashboard. The time it takes a task to be approved varies depending on the number of moderators working on the approvals, but it should not take more than 24-48 hours.

And this one was interesting as well:

What is the difference between a Task and a Keystroke?

We apologize for the confusion between Tasks and Keystrokes now that we have completed the migration to the SmartCrowd platform. At VirtualBee and KeyForCash, work was recorded in “Keystrokes”, and you were paid out based on how many correct keystrokes you entered. At the SmartCrowd, there are many more types of work available, and all non-Data Entry tasks are paid by the task. For DATA ENTRY ONLY, we still pay based on keystrokes, but the platform is only designed to show you task-based information for compatibility with other work types. The “Keystrokes” counter shown when you are working on a task is comparable to the “Unconfirmed Keystrokes” counter shown on VirtualBee.

At this time, we do not have the ability to show your “Confirmed Keystrokes”, or any other information about your completed work at the Keystroke level. It is very important to understand that all keystrokes in a snippet need to be correct, both in the old systems and in the current one, in order to be paid for them. We have never paid for individual correct keystrokes, unless the confirmed answer is only a single keystroke such as a “Blank”, “0”, etc. Entering “1233” when the snippet reads “1234” will result in no payment. You will be paid for all keystrokes on Tasks (Snippets) with 100% correct characters.

You might have already read this. If not, there it is ...

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!! SAY WHAT???!!!!!!!!! WTFreak!!!!! I did not know the second portion of this about confirmed keystrokes under LionBridge. Under KFC, we were paid for all correct keystrokes, whether we keyed one # or letter incorrectly in the snippet or not. So, this is saying the snippet needs to be keyed 100% correctly in order to get paid for it. That really stinks. Because if you key a snippet with 20 or 30 characters & get one wrong, we are not gonna get paid for that entire snippet? That just doesn't seem right. If you're paying per keystroke, we should be paid for correct keystrokes. If you're gonna pay per snippet, then we should be paid a set price per snippet, say 5 cents or more depending on how many characters are in that snippet. This means your accuracy rate needs to be 99.9% correct at all times in order to get paid a decent amount. So, that explains a lot. I just ASSUMED (we know what that does!), they were going to keep everything the same the way it was done under KFC. I guess NOT!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much for bringing this to everyone's attention. This is something I failed to see in THEIR FAQs, but I know KFC did pay for all CORRECTLY keyed characters, not completely correct snippets. And I did monitor my blank keying & I know for a fact I was never paid for those. So, I may have to re-assess whether or not I want to keep working for VB, now that I know this rule concerning confirmed keystrokes. #MINDBLOWN

[Beach24]

Are you sure you used to get paid for incorrect snippets? I worked for them for years and we were never paid for a snippet unless it was 100% correct.

[LadyMia]

Originally Posted by Beach24

Are you sure you used to get paid for incorrect snippets? I worked for them for years and we were never paid for a snippet unless it was 100% correct.

I thought I was paid, the rules back then said paid for every correct character, it didn't say correct snippet. But who knows? Either way if that was the case, they should make that 100% crystal clear that we are paid per snippet. I've been with them since 2009, and I could swear their FAQs said we were paid per correcly typed characters. Oh well who knows?!!! I still say if they are going to do it per snippet, then we should be paid per snippet and not per character. Otherwise they have been getting a lot of free work from people, even if they did type one character wrong in a snippet. I mean then this means I would be skipping a heck of a lot more snippets, when I am taking guesses on some of the handwritten stuff.

I will be skipping things left & right now & I know they don't like you to do a whole lot of skipping either. I don't know. I just know my hourly rate used to be better than it is now & they raised the rate 5 cents. I know I have a pretty high accuracy rate, but when I think of all the snippets that were cut off & I just typed as much as I could see, I can't believe that they counted those wrong. I don't know what to think?

They should just pay us a 1/2 cent per snippet, then at least if we key 15,000 correct snippets in an hour we can make $7.50. I mean it's just not right to say we are paid for correctly typed characters, if they really mean correctly typed snippets. I wish they would clarify this.

[viwiz]

Back in October, the question of whether all keystrokes in a snippet had to be typed correctly to be paid for it was discussed in this forum and it was stated that the same method was used on Virtual Bee and KeyForCash and was not a new method upon converting to The Smart Crowd. I also got a personal reply upon verifying the truth of this statement that said: This is how it has always been -- we can't get paid for words that are misspelled or have errors in them, so we can't pay you for those snippets.

To review what was discussed in October, type Nick in the search box and it will take you to 9 pages of info. Page 6 is where the keystrokes vs snippets was explained. Reading it back now made me scratch my head. It said ... refers to what you have seen and doesn't affect your pay. Confusing.

[BlueMoods]

I guess you've all seen the announcement when you log into Smart Crowd, but in case anyone missed it:

Recently we have become aware of many concerns regarding credit for Blank characters in Data Entry tasks. After a thorough review by our technical team, we have determined the following:

We have been recording confirmed blanks and retaining these characters in your account history
We have not been properly crediting worker accounts for these characters
Thank you to the many workers who reported this problem, and we apologize for this error. We have fixed this problem in our software, and all confirmed Blanks will now be properly credited to your accounts as you work. Additionally, we will be issuing a retroactive credit to all worker accounts that were affected by this issue. You will receive credit for all unpaid confirmed blanks up until the time this fix went into place. This credit will be posted to your balance before the end of the current pay period, July 16th. If this credit puts you over the payout threshold, you will be paid as normal at this time. If not, it will remain in your account as normal until you reach payout.

[LadyMia]

Yes, I just saw it a few minutes ago, while I was in working. Well, hallelujah and Praise the Lord. It's about darn time they believed us. I had sent two emails & each time they sent me back a response that I was getting paid for blanks. And I was like "nah, I don't think so" I even stated that there were others on a message board I frequent that were reporting the same problem. So, I guess enough of us sent in emails that they decided to check it out for themselves. I'm so glad they finally looked into it & fixed it. I hope my back pay is a good amount. I'm trying to get to pay out now.

Now if only they would fix the glitch of the system not keeping up with you when you're keying fast or snippets not loading, so you can't key them. That is still a big headache to be going along & then all of a sudden it gets jammed up and isn't showing the images. Oh well, I guess they'll fix one problem @ a time. Guess we'll have to bug them about this next. It really hampers your efforts to get to pay out, especially when there is only one more day left to get there. It was very slow for most of this pay period. It really picked up just this week.

Happy keying everyone.

[Dieseldaddy]

They haven't fixed it on my end yet. It still isn't counting my blanks.

[wheelock]

Has anyone been received their credit yet? Just wondering if maybe they're doing it right before the pay period ends or if some people have already been credited. Trying hard to reach payout, but there hasn't been much work today and I still have a little bit to go.

[LadyMia]

Originally Posted by wheelock

Has anyone been received their credit yet? Just wondering if maybe they're doing it right before the pay period ends or if some people have already been credited. Trying hard to reach payout, but there hasn't been much work today and I still have a little bit to go.

Yes, I have received my credit. It looks as if they may have applied it after midnight EST. I must say I am quite pleased with my credit. I wasn't able to make payout, but my credit allowed me to reach it. So, I hope everyone else received there's and if you hadn't made pay out, hopefully your credit will allow you too.

Thanks Lionbridge for rectifying this situation & issuing credits to the workers.