MTurk Glossary

[kryss]

Glossary of MTurk Terms





This glossary is currently being updated. If you have any suggestions or additions, please leave them in a post. ​

 

[kryss]

Acronyms

AA:
Auto Approval Time.
A requester sets an auto-approval time of anywhere between 0 Seconds and 30 days for every HIT they create. After a HIT is submitted, it will automatically approve after this amount of time has gone past.
(sometimes AA used to refer to AndAccept links instead of “PandA”.)

AFK:
Away From Keyboard

AFAIK:
As far as I know

AC: Attention Check Question
A question used in surveys and other tasks to make sure the worker is paying attention. It may provide instruction to make a certain choice, ignore questions, or other directions. Used to screen out poor quality data.

AHK:
Auto Hot Key
1. A program used to execute hot key scripts.
2 .A script run with AutoHotKey


AMT:
Amazon Mechanical Turk (mturk)
A website for completing tasks for pay. A cloud-based labor platform designed to connect people who need data (Requesters) with people who are willing to provide it (workers).
(Source = /r/mturk FAQ)

AWS:
Amazon Web Services
A collection of remote computing services (also called web services) that together make up a cloud computing platform, encompassing mturk, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com.

C4C:
Check4Change
FireFox extension that allows auto refreshing of a tab. Also allows you to monitor pages for any changes, giving you a notification when it detects one. (similar to using Page Monitor in Chrome)

EZPZ:
Easy Peasy
Something that doesn’t require very much skill or effort.

FF
Firefox

FWIW:
For What It's Worth

GDLK:
God Like
Someone or something that is exceptionally good.

GM:
Greasemonkey

HAM / Hamming:
A term used to describe going as fast and hard as possible on a batch till there is no more HIT's available. Originates from the saying “Go HAM” which means “go as hard as a mother f***er”.

HIT:
Human Intelligence Task
A job posted to Amazon’s mTurk platform. Referred to as “human intelligence tasks” due to the fact that bots/programs are less capable of performing the work than human beings.
(Source: Amazon Mechanical Turk on Wikipedia)

HIT DB / DB:
MTurk HIT Database
A user script that keeps track of the HIT's you have completed. It populates a database with information of your submitted HITs and allows you to search through the data from your worker dashboard.

HNWTF:
Hit Not Worth Turking For
Hits that pay under $0.10 a minute.

HWTF:
HITs Worth Turking For on Reddit
A reddit community (subreddit) where HIT's are posted along with completion times, votes, and comments.

IC / ICF:
Informed Consent / Informed Consent Form
An informed consent document communicates to the prospective research subject the purpose, procedures, risks and benefits of the study, the subject’s rights in participating in the research, and the freedom to decline to participate without jeopardy.
(Source: Prairie View A&M Univeristy IRB - Informed Consent Process)

IIRC:
If I Recall Correctly

IRB:
Institutional Review Board
An institutional review board (IRB), also known as an independent ethics committee (IEC) or ethical review board, is a committee that has been formally designated to approve, monitor, and review biomedical and behavioral research involving humans. They often conduct some form of risk-benefit analysis in an attempt to determine whether or not research should be done.
(Source: Wikipedia: Institutional Review Board)

IRC:
Internet Relay Chat
A webchat technology.

MC:
Memory Check Question
A quality check question used in surveys that asks you to recall information previously presented in the task.

MTF:
Mturk Forum

MTG:
Mturk Grind

NSFW:
Not Safe For Work

NSFL:
Not Safe For Life

PM:
Page Monitor
A browser extension for Chrome that allows you to receive a notification when pages change. When used with mturk URLs, this lets you know as soon as certain HITs/requesters are available to work on.

Panda / P&A / PandA link:
Preview and Accept URL (formerly known as AndAccept), often used in tandem with page refresher/auto-reload software. A user script that adds PandA links to your searches on mTurk.

TIL:
Today I Learned

TL;DR / tl;dr:
Too Long, Didn’t Read

TM:
Tampermonkey or Turkmaster

TN:
Turkernation Forum

TO:
Turkopticon
Turkopticon is a platform that allows you to rate the quality of requesters and view their current reputation with workers.

YMMV:
Your Mileage May Vary

 

[kryss]

Definitions

Auto Granted Qualification:
A qualification that is auto granted. These types of qualifications do not require a test, they can be obtained by simply clicking the "Request Qualification" link on a particular hit. These qualifications are usually given to track and prevent retakes or as a way to set a quality score that can be lowered due to bad work. When the value is changed, it may prevent you from accessing those HITs.

Batch:
A type of HIT designed to allow a worker to complete multiple submission. You can complete as many HIT's in the batch as it allows, unless otherwise advised by the requester’s instructions.

Blocks (Hard/Soft):
A way for a requester to prevent a worker from accepting any of their HITs.

Cat batch / Cat HITs:
A HIT type based on a template requiring Categorization Masters Qualification. These HITs involve categorizing data into different groups and subgroups. The categorization template provided by Amazon uses the Masters qualification by default. Because of this, only batches of this type that use their own categorization template can be posted without the Master qualification.

Cherry Picking:
1. Skipping over the difficult HITs in a batch in order to do only the easiest HIT's available.
2. Skipping over HITs that are impossible to complete as per requester’s instructions in order to find new HITs in the batch that can be completed. This can cause the last HITs in a batch to be generally unsubmittable and worthless due to being left with nothing but skipped and returned HITs from other workers.

Closed Qualification:
A qualification that is no longer available to the general turking public. These types of qualifications are normally obtained by a requester posting a series of HITs to the general turk public and granting the qualification only to the workers who provided acceptable data. Can also be granted during open enrollment type occurrences when a requester advertises the qualification as being open on a turk forum and granting it to those that contact them.

CS Workstation:
CrowdSource Workstation
A web interface from mturk requester CrowdSource that provides a workstation. Shows you HIT's that you qualify for, account stastics, and other information.
There is also a Support Page, you can navigate to the support page by clicking on the question mark in the top right corner of your Crowdsource Workstation. (When you open the support page you will see a link to "open a ticket", this is the best place to email Crowdsource about any questions you may have regarding their HIT's.)

Dashboard:
A worker’s dashboard page on mturk.com. Contains information such as HIT statistics, worker ID, and earnings transfer options.

Donation Member:

Greasemonkey:
Link to Extension:
A browser extension for Firefox that allows installing and running custom user scripts on websites.

Golden HITs:
HITs in a batch with known answers used to compare against a worker’s responses. Used to check for quality.

Grind:
1: To focus intensely on completing HIT's for an extended duration (I'm going to grind this batch till it dies).
2: To complete a large amount of the same HIT from a batch repetitively.

Hit Scraper:
A user script that customizes your search results by setting specific criteria. It can be found on

Hoard:
To accept as many of a HIT as possible before they are no longer available to be accepted. Loading up with good HITs to work on later from your queue.

Majority Rules:
A way of sampling data quality from HITs. With these HITs, a requester allows multiple workers to complete the same task and cross-references their answers to determine if a worker didn’t put in a good effort. Some workers may find themselves in the minority, receiving a rejection or removal of a qualification, if they noticed something other workers missed. Workers tend to avoid majority rules tasks that are subjective in nature if the requester uses this method of accepting/rejecting.

Masters:
Master Qualification, Categorization Masters, Photo Moderation Masters
“Masters are an elite group of Workers, who have demonstrated superior performance while completing thousands of HITs for a variety of Requesters across the Mechanical Turk Marketplace. Masters must maintain this high level of performance or risk losing this distinction. Mechanical Turk has built technology which analyzes Worker performance, identifies high performing Workers and monitors their performance over time.”
(Source = Amazon Mechanical Turk website)

Music Room / Plug DJ / DJ Roomoom:
A website that allows users to chat while taking turns playing songs or videos from playlists. Playlists can be made by searching for the media you want from either youtube or soundcloud.

Rep (Pos/Neg):
Postive/Negative Reputation

Queue:
HITs you have accepted and are awaiting submission. Found under the “HITs Assigned to you” tab on MTurk.

Page Refresher:
A piece of software such as Easy Auto Refresh (Chrome), ReloadEvery (FireFox), or similar that refreshes a page at set time intervals. Used with a PandA link to accept HITs automatically..

/r/mturk:
mTurk on Reddit
A community (subreddit) on the popular social link-sharing reddit.com. "Redditors" gather here to share, discuss, and vote on mTurk related content and links.

Tampermonkey:
Link to Extension:
A browser extension for Chrome that allows installing and running custom user scripts on websites.

TeamRed:
When you have a substantial amount of HIT's pending, sending your worst case scenario projection into red (under 95%), while using this script; MTurk Worst & Best Case Scenario

Turker:
Someone who works to complete tasks for pay on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

User script / Script:
Small sets of code/instructions written in JavaScript to alter the functionality of a website.

 

[Drwho10]

Shaddap:
Something to tell @UnspunReality whenever you see him

 

[electrolyte]

Acronyms

Add:

GF - GreasyFork
MTC - MTurk Crowd
HM - HIT Monitor

Definitions

CS Workstation:
CrowdSource Workstation

Masters:
Master Qualification, Categorization Masters, Photo Moderation Masters

Update to CS's new name and domain (OneSource)

Update to remove the specialty types of Masters now that it's all going to be just one.

 

[DjBonadoobie]

HNWTF:
Hit Not Worth Turking For
Hits that pay under $0.10 a minute.

So... don't wanna nitpick, but I'm going to anyways

I imagine a lot of this glossary was a copy paste job for simplicities sake, but this in particular is so outdated (imo). Since this is a new community maybe we can get with the times and set the bar a little higher. I know some people still think $6/hr is fine for mTurk, but a lot also don't. I also get that goals and what pay is or is not acceptable varies user to user... but maybe we could redefine this as

"HITs that pay lower than minimum wage or an acceptable hourly rate"

I dunno, just spitballin'

 

[kryss]

So... don't wanna nitpick, but I'm going to anyways

I imagine a lot of this glossary was a copy paste job for simplicities sake, but this in particular is so outdated (imo). Since this is a new community maybe we can get with the times and set the bar a little higher. I know some people still think $6/hr is fine for mTurk, but a lot also don't. I also get that goals and what pay is or is not acceptable varies user to user... but maybe we could redefine this as

"HITs that pay lower than minimum wage or an acceptable hourly rate"

I dunno, just spitballin'

I am in the process of updating it and I definitely do want suggestions! You're right on the wage, it does need adjusted.

 

[TSolo315]

Suggestions:

OMGWWTSJFE - Oh My God Why Won't This Survey Just Fucking End?
MIAFJ...S - Masters Is A Fucking Joke...Salt
LazyPandA - A PandA that never catches anything
Ughhhhghghghhghghgasdgj - Sound of a turker's spirit slowly dying

 

[clickhappier]

PM = Private Message - sending a message privately to another forum/chat user; also called 'Conversations' on Xenforo and 'queries' in IRC chat

update script link under 'TeamRed' (previous copy was deleted) - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/7589-mturk-worst-best-case-scenario

 

[YAHU]

"yes"="yes"

 

[electrolyte]

Weekly report - An email workers receive every Sunday morning from Amazon with statistics about their past week of work, including total earnings for the past week and numbers of HITs accepted and rejected.

 

[electrolyte]

HOT HIT of the Day. The HIT that you think is the best one you've done all day long. Also: HOTM (month), HOTY (year)

 

[electrolyte]

PE: Projected Earnings

 

[Itsmee]

ANS: Administrative NIP Slip

 

[thedorchannel]

d.o.r.= dreams over reality. stop PMing me people!

 

[thedorchannel]

pantha= "preview and then accept" It means automatically grabbing a hit by using a script that views the preview page of a hit and THEN accepts the hit. This is done to prevent the "No Hits Available" message from batches that have too many people working on them.

 

[Serial Mom]

.