+44-20-8154-3721

+7-831-262-10-70

+7-495-545-46-62

71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ

42 B, ul. B. Pokrovskaya, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, 603000

office 213, 8/1, ul. Nametkina, Moscow, Russia, 117420

Monday to Friday 08:00 to 17:00 (GMT+1)

 

1. What are “useful keystrokes”?

Keystrokes resulting in changes to the reviewed text on the screen are considered “useful”. More specifically these are ones involving the alphanumeric section keys on the keyboard as well as the formatting keys (space bar, backspace, enter and delete). In addition, such shortcuts as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, etc. using any key from the alphanumeric section are also considered “useful” and are processed by the application as one keystroke.

2. If I temporarily switch to another window (for instance, to check the definition of a term in the glossary), will the application stop the timer?

The application stops the timer automatically (i.e. without any requirement to press the “Pause” or “Stop” buttons) in two cases: 1) if you make no useful keystrokes in the active window for 5 minutes; and 2) if you switch from the edited document’s window to another one, and do not return within 5 minutes.

3. While reviewing a text, I may spend a significant amount of time searching the internet for the exact meaning of some difficult terms. Is it not unfair that the application stops the timer in this case?

The application measures time spent on file revision. A prolonged search for information on the internet we consider to be auxiliary work. In reality, text “difficulty” is quite subjective, often depending on the editor’s experience of work in that specific subject field. We believe that “complexity coefficients” should be agreed between the editor and project manager and incorporated into the payment rate prior to starting the job in order to avoid this becoming an issue.

4. Can an editor “outsmart” the application or somehow drive up the time count?

Any security algorithm can be bypassed with enough effort! For example, the user could make multiple ‘useful’ keystrokes, and then erase the result of those keystrokes. In such a case, the application will count both the keystrokes and the deletion operations as well as the time spent carrying them out. Such a fraud would be easy to reveal, as the keystroke count would be unexpectedly high compared with the timer value and there would be a fairly obvious mismatch between the visible extent of editing and that recorded. If you find that the program appears to be vulnerable to misuse, please do provide feedback and suggestions as we are very happy to update the application wherever possible to include further facilities and to enhance its accuracy.

5. If a particular editor is simply a slow worker, will this show in the output?

Such a situation would be evident in the mismatch between the “revision depth” and the time spent when compared with work received from other ‘faster’ editors. The project manager can take this into account when agreeing future hourly rates with this particular editor.