Hey guys! Long time Turker, short term lurker.

[Troy]

So as we all know, everything that we all once held true is now changed with the new website, which as suddenly lead me directly to the source!

Name is Troy. Been turking for about 3 years now and only recently starting to become more accustomed to more drastic scripts(outside of the standard scraper) and whatnot. What really sucks, is I had just figured out hitnotifier.com which quickly became my bread and butter.
I'm at about 39,000 hits submitted with no masters in sight. lol. I wont hold my breath.

Also, not that it really matters, I am a mod for r/hitsworthturking for, so please welcome yourselves over there to contribute as well! You guys seem WAY more active and conversational, so I am looking forward to doing my best to give back for all of those who have given to me over these past few days while my scrapers have been down and mturk suite doesnt function(i turk mainly at work, so many of things I use for efficiency at home, dont work here).

So quick question.... Is there anyway to parse the forums and scrape for hits that get posted? I know on turkerhub as well here, you can eliminate the posts that arent HIT's and get updates as hits get posted, but I dont see that as being as efficient as hitnotifier.com was. Seeing as I just discovered hitnotifier and it was so helpful, I cant help but thing there are other great resources out there that are hidden deep within these forums. So any insight into what makes you a better turker would be awesome. If there was another site like hitnotifier... that would be amazing.

Have a great day guys!

Troy

 

[Cara]

mturkplus used to do that, but i think its down.

 

[Troy]

mturkplus used to do that, but i think its down.

So would i be correct in saying everyone here diligently watches the posts and waits for something new to pop up? I am honestly just curious. You learn something new each day and was curious how everyone makes thier lives more efficient.

 

[Cara]

yes, but not JUST this forum.
i have 2 monitors, and i split each in half.
i have hit finder and my queue on one screen.
this forum and a tv show on the other.

 

[electrolyte]

So would i be correct in saying everyone here diligently watches the posts and waits for something new to pop up? I am honestly just curious. You learn something new each day and was curious how everyone makes thier lives more efficient.

If you wait to see a HIT being posted on the forum, it's already been several seconds or minutes or longer since it was originally posted. In that time, plenty of workers will have already accepted it and if there's a limited number of tasks, it could very well be gone. I use HIT Finder to watch directly for HITs to be posted on MTurk itself. The forum's a good place to see people talking about HITs and sharing their experiences but if you're relying on it exclusively to find HITs, you'll be missing out on a lot.

 

[Troy]

If you wait to see a HIT being posted on the forum, it's already been several seconds or minutes or longer since it was originally posted. In that time, plenty of workers will have already accepted it and if there's a limited number of tasks, it could very well be gone. I use HIT Finder to watch directly for HITs to be posted on MTurk itself. The forum's a good place to see people talking about HITs and sharing their experiences but if you're relying on it exclusively to find HITs, you'll be missing out on a lot.

Well of course i figure the hits are a few minutes old, but I prey on the batches that last a little longer. I've been using scrapers and whatnot for a long time now, always trying to get ahead of the curve, however my work computers block extensions in Chrome and I have limited capabilities in FF, so its been tough since the new site came into play. Hitscraper has been down for me recently and wont work on greasemonkey(atleast not on the version I use at work), so I have been struggling to get my fix in during my downtime! Mturk Suite is blocked sadly, so it leaves me searching for new avenues in which to find hits. Then i found these forums and figures I would give them a shot here.

Are there any other scrapers out there outside of the well known Hitscraper and MTS HitFinder? Again, looking for some workarounds given my firewall situation. lol.

 

[electrolyte]

Well of course i figure the hits are a few minutes old, but I prey on the batches that last a little longer. I've been using scrapers and whatnot for a long time now, always trying to get ahead of the curve, however my work computers block extensions in Chrome and I have limited capabilities in FF, so its been tough since the new site came into play. Does the hitfinder scrape, or does it just look for certain parameters(worker name, HIT id, hit name, etc), that you put in for it to find? Hitscraper has been down for me recently and wont work on greasemonkey(atleast not on the version I use at work), so I have been struggling to get my fix in during my downtime! Mturk Suite is blocked sadly, so it leaves me searching for new avenues in which to find hits. Then i found these forums and figures I would give them a shot here.

HIT Finder scrapes, similar to HIT Scraper. But it's built into MTurkSuite so if you're unable to use MTS, then HF won't work for you.

HIT Scraper was updated after the new site change, so you'll have to get the newest version for it to work and also use the new scraper URL. More info here: https://www.mturkcrowd.com/posts/1080573/

 

[Troy]

HIT Finder scrapes, similar to HIT Scraper. But it's built into MTurkSuite so if you're unable to use MTS, then HF won't work for you.

HIT Scraper was updated after the new site change, so you'll have to get the newest version for it to work and also use the new scraper URL. More info here: https://www.mturkcrowd.com/posts/1080573/

Thanks for the info regarding the scraper. I've scoured the web trying to get Hitscraper to work on my work computer, however I cannot get it to run. Keeps getting hung on "Processing" and never progresses any further. I've been turking and using scripts for some amount of time, so I would like to imagine I know a little bit of what I am talking about, however in this case, I just cant figure it out. I updated the script, i use the right URL, but we still get the same issue. I will add that I use a legacy version of Greasemonkey and I am unable to use Tampermonkey. We use FF version 25. Kid you not. For a multi-billion dollar organization who strives for customer safety and information integrity, you would think the latest browsers would be the safest bet. False. So I am stuck using a legacy version of FF so old that even the older versions of Tampermonkey arent compatible.

Just to edit my post and give a quick update... I previously had this issue on my home computer using greasemonkey. Moments ago I installed tampermonkey and now the scraper is working on FF at home using Tampermonkey, but not greasemonkey... So it looks like i am SOL regarding scraping at work given that I cant get tampermonkey on my work computer due to the outdated version of FF. So i guess those with Greasemonkey,... Its time to transition to TM.