Masters Qualification Info - Everything You Need To Know

[clickhappier]

Masters FAQ


what is Masters?

An Amazon-controlled qualification that allows some turkers to have access to more HITs than other turkers, and not get interrupted by Amazon captchas anymore.

(And because this has come up before: It has nothing to do with Master's degrees, which is a level of university education that comes after a bachelor's degree. There are no classes, training, tests, or education requirements for the MTurk 'Masters' qual.)


How can I get Masters?

Do at least 1000 HITs, and maintain at least 99.0% approval. Then wait for it to be randomly bestowed if you get lucky. There is nothing more you can do to affect the process. I previously investigated numerous reports of what characteristics turkers had when getting or not getting Masters, and found contradictions of all other criteria speculation that has been discussed over the years.

Same as with the vast majority of quals on MTurk, clicking the 'Request Qualification' link has no effect on when or if you receive it. (Feel free to click it periodically if it makes you feel better, it won't hurt anything either.)


How many types of Masters are there?

For the first several years of MTurk's operations, Masters didn't exist.
Then they introduced Masters as 2 types, initially given out separately based on doing certain types of HITs: 'Categorization Masters' and 'Photo Moderation Masters'.
Then they added an overarching generic 'Masters' and started giving out all 3 quals simultaneously to each recipient.
And now since early 2016, they're supposedly trying to get requesters to drop the two subtypes and just use the generic 'Masters', though the subtypes are still being used on some requesters' established custom HIT templates.

A few individual requesters have made up their own custom quals with 'Masters' in the qual's name (requesters, please avoid that unnecessary confusion). These have nothing to do with the actual Masters quals controlled by 'Amazon Mechanical Turk'.


How often is Masters given out?

It used to happen much more frequently, but in 2015 it was only given out twice (May and December), and as of July 2016 it hasn't been given out at all so far this year.


"But Amazon says..."

The very limited information they've ever posted about Masters, and which the clueless email support reps copy and paste in response to any questions about it, is marketing-hype nonsense which is all either years outdated or entirely made up.


I'm a requester, why shouldn't I require Masters?

It's doled out randomly and excludes many other experienced high-quality workers. Some turkers with years of experience completing tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of HITs at 99.9%+ approval are still waiting to get lucky.

Use stats quals instead, such as "Total approved HITs is not less than 5000" with "HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 99". (Note that some of the Amazon-provided HIT templates won't allow you to change the qual requirements, you're stuck with Masters on those.)

It also costs you a little extra in Amazon fees to require Masters on your HITs (not nearly as much extra as it used to, though, since the June 2015 fee increases relatively devalued it).


How many people have Masters?

We don't know anymore, because in Dec 2015, some Amazon jerk decided to take away our decade-long access to the numbers of how many people have each qualification. I have earlier numbers compiled in my previously-written posts (which I put together in Aug 2014 and updated through Dec 2015, and contains all known pre-2014 numbers too) that I'm reposting below.



More details below on:
The official description
The beginning
The complaints
The default
The numbers
The revocations
The oopsies
The theories, part 1
The theories, part 2
The lucky and unlucky stats, part 1
The lucky and unlucky stats, part 2
The simplification (from 3 quals to 1, but still obfuscated)

Plus:
Advice for new Masters
Masters Humor
That time a suspended turker got Masters
How to remove the default Masters requirement from a HIT in the Requester GUI
Experiences asking requesters to stop using Masters

 

[clickhappier]

The official description:


Amazon's Worker FAQ says:

" What is a Mechanical Turk Master?

Masters are elite groups of Workers who have demonstrated accuracy on specific types of HITs on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. Workers achieve a Masters distinction by consistently completing HITs of a certain type with a high degree of accuracy across a variety of Requesters. Masters must continue to pass our statistical monitoring to remain Mechanical Turk Masters.

Masters receive special perks including:
- Exclusive access to work that requires a Master Qualification
- Access to a private forum available only to Masters

Please note that Workers cannot apply for this status - it is a performance based distinction. The best thing a Worker can do to become a Master is to submit Assignments with accurate results across a wide variety of Requesters on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. "
​

And Amazon's Requester FAQ says:

" What are Mechanical Turk Masters?

Masters are elite groups of Workers who have demonstrated accuracy on specific types of HITs on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. Workers achieve a Masters distinction by consistently completing HITs of a certain type with a high degree of accuracy across a variety of Requesters. Masters must continue to pass our statistical monitoring to remain Mechanical Turk Masters. You can have Masters who have demonstrated accuracy specifically in Data Categorization or Photo Moderation do your HITs, or you can elect to have general Masters perform your HITs. Because Masters have demonstrated accuracy, they can command a higher reward for their HITs. You should expect to pay Masters a higher reward. "
​

And Amazon's Requester Best Practices Guide (pdf) says:

" Mechanical Turk Masters

Requesters can also send their HITs exclusively to Mechanical Turk 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.

Today, two types of Masters are available – Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters.

Because Masters have demonstrated accuracy, they can command a higher reward for their HITs. You should expect to pay Masters a higher reward. "
​

Update Dec 17, 2015: As of Jan 31, 2016, Amazon claims there will only be the one universal Masters qual (that was introduced when the Nov 2012 The default change happened, and they'd been giving out all 3 simultaneously to pretty much all recipients ever since), doing away with Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters. (But some HITs do still show up with those, 6 months later and counting.)

 

[clickhappier]

The beginning:


The Masters program was first announced by Amazon on Jun 23, 2011:
on the Amazon Web Services blog:

" Get Better Results with Amazon Mechanical Turk Masters

There are now more than 500,000 Mechanical Turk Workers in 190 countries on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. These Workers are ready and eager to work on a wide variety of tasks (Human Intelligence Tasks or HITS) including data cleansing, image filtering, image tagging, and categorization.

Today, we're excited to introduce Mechanical Turk Masters. This new feature gives Requesters direct access to the best Workers on the Mechanical Turk marketplace. Masters are an elite group of Workers, who have demonstrated superior performance while completing thousands of HITs across the Marketplace. Masters must maintain this high level of performance or they may lose this distinction. Mechanical Turk has built technology which analyzes Worker performance, identifies high performing Workers and monitors their performance over time. Starting today, Requesters will be able to access two types of Masters -- Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters. Workers with these qualifications will have a certain skill set. For example:

- Photo Moderation Masters have proven that they can review photos against site guidelines, determine if a photo includes specific content, or pick the best photo given a set of criteria.
- Categorization Masters have proven that they can categorize web pages, advertisements, or products in a social catalog. They can also classify the sentiment of social media content.

These qualifications are automatically granted to Mechanical Turk Workers on an on-going basis. Mechanical Turk Masters have exclusive access to HITS that require a Masters qualification. They also have access to a private forum, and need not navigate through a CAPTCHA to work on HITS.

With this new system, skills developed on HITS from one Requester can now qualify Workers to handle HITS from other Requesters. "
​

and the Mechanical Turk blog:

" Get Better Results with Less Effort with Mechanical Turk Masters!

We're excited to introduce Mechanical Turk Masters. Masters are an elite group of Workers who have demonstrated superior performance while completing thousands of HITs across the Marketplace.

By publishing your HITs to Masters, the quality of your answers will increase (you’ll get right answers more often) and managing results and Workers will be easier. You may even find that you can publish fewer assignments per HIT and still get increased accuracy. Mechanical Turk Masters provide Requesters with an easier way to distribute HITs to Workers who have proven themselves on the Mechanical Turk Marketplace.

Starting today, Requesters will be able to access two types of Masters -- Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters. Workers who achieve these distinctions are granted the corresponding Masters Qualification for either Photo Moderation or Categorization.

Although you can send any type of HIT to Mechanical Turk Masters, Workers who have been granted a specific Masters Qualification have demonstrated superior performance at these types of HITs. For instance, Photo Moderation Masters are the best choice if you want to have a photo reviewed to determine if it meets your site guidelines, or need specific types of content identified such as the number of people in a photo. Categorization Masters are the best choice if you need to have companies categorized by industry or identify the department for products in a retail catalog or characterize the sentiment of a tweet or blog post.

Getting Started with Mechanical Turk Masters
Accessing Mechanical Turk Masters is easy. Requesters simply require Workers have one of the Master Qualifications when creating HITs via the Requester web site, API or Command Line Tools. Requesters can further refine their workforce by requiring Workers have other system or custom Qualifications in addition to the Masters Qualification.

Congratulations Mechanical Turk Masters!
Achieving Mechanical Turk Master status is an honor for Workers – and we want to congratulate the Workers who have achieved this distinction! Kudos! "
​

A blog post by 'G.F.' of The Economist, Jul 2011:

" Some workers are more equal than others
...
On June 23rd it [Amazon] announced the Mechanical Turk Masters program.

The scheme anoints individuals who have performed well in one or both of the two categories for which Amazon has so far compiled performance statistics. To be crowned a Photo Moderation Master a worker must excel at tagging images uploaded to websites. Categorisation Masters, meanwhile, have to demonstrate an uncanny ability to cubbyhole information accurately. Amazon gauges skills by using other groups of workers to review task results and rate their quality.

Requesters may choose to funnel jobs only to master moderators or categorisers, whether or not the tasks in question require these particular sorts of expertise. Workers who make the grade no longer have to fill out CAPTCHAs as they work through human-intelligence tasks (HITs)
...
Masters represent as few as 5,000 out of the half a million registered workers. (Amazon doesn't disclose how many of those are actually active.) Many qualified workers feel left out. This is fanning discontent ... "
​

One of Amazon's internal requester accounts, called 'AR - WA', regularly posts closed-qual HITs for an apparently-small group of workers to review what other workers have submitted on the original postings of a wide variety of requesters' HITs. This may have something to do with getting or keeping Masters. (The Jul 2011 blog post from The Economist seems to confirm this... And you can see from the earliest, albiet uninformative other than its date, TO review of 'AR - WA', it's been around since at least Nov 2010, presumably working out bugs and gradually gathering data for the first Masters rollout the following summer.) Besides the many normal HITs that have shown up in what they review, there have also been not-really-reviewable (and some ToS-y) HITs like "Click 'Wrong' for a Google Image" and "Sign up", and even a forum HIT "ZinGy is on the east coast", which indicate that the selection of which HIT groups they review is at least partly random. See the MTG thread AR-WA The Truth Is Out There for more details.

(Update Jul 2016: The AR-WA HITs haven't been seen in several months AFAIK; Amazon might have stopped doing that. Or maybe they're just 'hidden' now...)

 

[clickhappier]

The complaints:


A blog post by 'DreamScaper', one of the early examples of worker complaints about the vagueness of the Masters program, Jul 2011:

" Problem with Mechancial Turk Masters
...
mTurk masters are unknown. Meaning that there is no documentation on what a worker needs to go about to get this qualification.
...
If you read about masters amazon promotes them as doing thousands of hits from multiple requesters. There are workers, myself included, who aim for 1,000 hits a day. My approval rating is 99.3% (most of my work comes from majority rules requester) and over 120k approved hits [but didn't receive Masters]. ... There are workers with much better stats then mine with approval ratings upwards of 99.9%, been turking longer, and more approved. They don't have it.
...
Masters were most likely given this qualification based on some random hits several months ago. This part, like everything else, simply unknown. ... Non masters simply point out their stats are better than current masters and they aren't masters. ... It was suggested that working for specific requesters granted the qual. ... some current masters admitted they didn't do work for the requesters that was listed as being watched.
...
Masters don't have to type captchas. ... When I do 1,000 hits a day I'm having to prove every 6-8 minutes I'm a human being. How is this fair? I don't mind because if it helps against spamming workers I don't mind. But is it really? "
​

From Stlrfn at MTF, Aug 2012:

" Well let's see... They say to do a variety of hits from many different requesters... but watch out how many different requesters you work for as you don't want to get blocks from those unsavory types. Then do many, many hits... but not too many hits as you don't want to chance a mass rejections from an unsavory requester that will send your approval percentage plummeting. Next, do a really good job on all of those new and different requesters so that those that are unsavory and are going to screw you over anyway receive quality work for nothing. Oh and finally, keep your fingers crossed because I am pretty sure they just pick random names out of a hat anyway. LOL "
​

From wetcake at MTF, in the midst of a humorously-written complaint about a requester, Feb 2013:

" mTurk: Sure! We have this special category called "Masters". It's not based on any Worker stats or accuracy, but it DOES mean that whoever does your HITs is a Master at Mastery, so make sure to select "Masters" so that only Masters can master your masterful work of mastering mastery! "
​

From Shell at CMB's blog, Feb 2013:

" Mturk Master Qualification
...
At the start of whole Amazon Mechanical Turk special master qualification I really did think it was for the good of the requesters and workers. ... These were turkers that had completed enough “gold” hits properly and really had a good grasp on what turking was all about.
...
On the requesters side of the deal there was a special group of highly qualified turkers that, for a small price, they could use to complete their HITs. Sure the cost was a bit more, roughly 20%, but they were using the best turkers so the quality of work would be superb.
...
it seemed that most of the requesters that were using the master qualification were actually paying less to the worker because they had to pay so much more to Amazon for the service.
...
If the master hits that are lining their pockets with a 20% premium are not getting done then they must need more masters. There must be too much work for the few masters they have to complete. And that is when it happened. People with the master qualification started coming out of the woodwork. Turkers that had only been turking for a few months started receiving the honorable email... "Welcome to Mechanical Turk Masters".
...
As for, "how do I get the master qualification?"... I am sorry to say that I cannot fully answer that question. Amazon will not say what you have to do or how you have to do it. There is no special amount of HITs to complete, no time constraints and no special experience needed. There are only vague hints to the workers and requesters alike. There does seem to be a very strong correlation between the masters qualification being granted and doing low priced hits that AMT graders "know" the answers to, but that is about it. ... "
​

From smerfy01 at MTG, Jul 2014:

" [re: how often Amazon gives out Masters] Once every few months...or sometimes they'll go on a couple week spree every Wednesday or Thursday.

The real question is, how the hell do they choose who gets it?

If you have 200k HITs and don't have masters, but someone has 6k HITs and does, it doesn't make sense.

People have thought it's about variation in how many requesters you work with and stuff like that, but most of us go through a lot of requesters and that doesn't seem to be the key.

What's the criteria then? Random chance? That one special HIT that no one thought to do because it wasn't worth it and a few people wound up doing it? Who knows. Amazon has never really told us. There's no method to this madness. "
​

And more from smerfy01 at MTG, Jul 2014:

" Here's my take on the "masters" issue. Really this is what bugs me about it. It has since before I took an extended break from turking.

There seems to be no real rhyme or reason to getting the qualification. People at 100k get it, people at 3.1k get it. It doesn't matter what your daily averages are or what specific HITs you do, really anything. If it did have to deal with any of that, someone on one of the multiple sites dedicated to this would've figured it out by now.

Why is that a problem? Because if there's no rhyme or reason, it's not really a reward. So then why are there so many HITs blocked off into the masters category when they could have possibly better work being done for them if they went a different route than what they choose? It's a little disingenuous to the requester and to the worker. "Requester A, we have this pool of highly qualified masters workers for you." "Turker 1, keep it up buddy and work hard! You'll get masters one day if you try your butt off!"

Both are slightly misleading to say the least. But that's what Amazon is doing with their masters qualification. I'm not saying I'm deserving of it, but I think that we as a community deserve at least some insight into how the selection process is handled because at this point, I'm thinking it's a crap shoot.

This isn't a slight against the people today who got it, I'm happy for you and kick some ass in those HITs, I'm annoyed at the system and how it's implemented. 2 days from now I'll have gone back to thinking "next time could be it! I'll just have another 10k submitted by then with a billion requesters. Motivation woo!" "
​

 

[clickhappier]

The default:

(See also: how to remove the default Masters requirement from a HIT in the Requester GUI)


From Frederick at his blog, Nov 2012:

" HITs not getting completed? You might have missed Amazon's new default Masters requirement. As they intended.

Today, in their infinite wisdom and right before the weekend so they could deal with all complaints on Monday, the Mechanical Turk team decided to roll out a fundamental changes to the Requester Web UI.

Specifically, they decided that choosing which workers you want to work on your HITs is now an "Advanced" option, much like choosing paper or plastic at the grocery store is an advanced option or deciding whether you want to buy brand name or generic medicine is for advanced users only. Of course, the things that are really advanced are woefully poorly described and left out of the Requester UI, but we all knew that already.

This correlated with a big change on the Worker's site: the Categorization Masters and Photo Moderation Masters were combined into one big group, which, much to the surprise of everyone, led to 20,686 'Masters'!
...
As to how workers are taking it, I have a 99.9% approval rating and 22,000 approved HITs and am seriously looking into finding another way to make ends meet. There's nothing like not being able to get a license that not even the issuing body will tell you the requirements for, and quite frankly I'm quickly becoming sick of it. This sleight of hand with the Requester UI is a dirty trick that will confuse requesters and do little else. "
​

From mturkconsultant (apparently aka Frederick) at MTF, Nov 2012:

" I wrote that blog post. ... I actually asked a lot of Master workers if they had the qualification and every single one with Cat or Photo did. None who had lost it had it, and no new workers reported getting it in droves. That means the counter is broken. "
​

From Panos Ipeirotis at his blog, Dec 2012:

" Mechanical Turk changing the defaults: The game has changed

Back in the summer of 2011, Mechanical Turk introduced a new type of qualification, the Mechanical Turk "Masters". The Master qualification was assigned by Amazon to workers that have proven themselves in the marketplace.

What exactly makes someone "proven"? This is, understandably, a well-kept secret by Amazon. The opacity of the qualification process annoys many workers: It is hard to prove that you are a Master and qualify for it, when you do not know how this qualification is granted. The rumor says that Amazon deploys decoy tasks on Mechanical Turk just to examine the performance of the workers and decide which ones to qualify as Masters.
...
However, an action taken by Amazon a month back has changed the dynamic of the market: Now the default requirement, for all tasks created through the UI interface, is to require using Masters workers. Removing the requirement is done only through the "advanced" menu, and is followed by a warning that you may not get good results if you opt not to use Masters.
...
So, effectively now we have the "novice" requesters, who get protected by default through the Masters qualification, and the "advanced" requesters that can implement their own qualification schemes to replace the Masters qualification.
...
Personally, I find this move exhilarating. "
​

From Eric D. DeRosia at his blog, Jan 2013:

" Mechanical Turk’s Hidden Option
...
Amazon has recently made a change that I need to post a warning about. In essence, Amazon has changed their requester interface to make 'master' workers a secret, opt-out option. If your MTurk project isn’t working well, this might be the reason.
...
Amazon charges a much higher rate if requesters use workers who have been awarded a 'master' designation. Amazon has awarded a number of workers this 'master' designation, which is supposed to indicate the best workers. On the face of it, the 'master” worker thing sounds like it would be good for requesters. However, it has serious problems.

For one thing, I follow the worker community closely (e.g., Turker Nation), and many good, devoted workers have not earned the 'master' designation. There is a lot of angst about 'masters' in the worker discussion space. Much of the uncertainty among workers is caused by Amazon’s decision to not reveal the requirements for earning the 'masters' designation. No one really knows what it means or how many “masters” there are.

As a requester, I’ve tried using 'master' workers, and I’ve had terrible luck. Perhaps most importantly, there are far fewer of these people, so projects don’t get done as quickly.
...
here is the new problem I’m highlighting. Amazon has recently made a change to their requester interface that makes 'master' workers not only an opt-out option, but an option that is hidden from normal view. When a requester completes the “New Project Create” form, it’s not at all obvious that 'master' workers are now the default. In the screen shot below, I’ve noted the four places that must be clicked to drill down through the interface to reveal the 'master' requirement and remove it.

Frankly, I view Amazon’s change in their interface as unseemly trickery. I assume Amazon did this because their margins are much higher for master HITs. Overall, I’m cheering for Amazon, but not even notifying requesters that they’re asking for masters?!? That’s not impressive. The other day, I was creating a new task from scratch, and I only caught this issue a few screens later when I was looking at the pricing and I saw a surprise surcharge for 'master' workers.

I’m sure 'master' workers are great for some types of HITs. However, it would be a shame if requesters are tricked by Amazon into unknowingly using 'master' workers. "
​

Since Masters became the hidden default, some workers have posted (examples at MTG, MTF, and TN) about contacting requesters through MTurk who might unintentionally be using Masters; some also respond to requesters' forum posts to suggest alternative qual settings.


From sugarmousejones at MTF, pointing out a problem with Masters now being the default for HITs, Mar 2013:

"I know I was wondering why it seemed like there were so many Masters tasks all of a sudden. If I understand this correctly, new requesters may not always know that Masters isn't a mandatory qualification. It looks like the default to Masters was done to ensure good workers to new requesters ... but I don't see how a new turker would ever make the Masters qualification without a sizeable pool of non-Master tasks to prove themselves."
​

And agreement from mischa at MTF:

"I noticed a change in the kind and quality of hits carrying the Master qual that probably coincided with the default setting. It seems to me that most of the hits with that qual don't belong there... they don't require any special skill beyond 'ordinary' hits. Not knocking the Master program in principle, BTW."
​

From spamgirl in comments at Panos's blog, Apr 2014:

" Now when you uncheck Masters qualification, you get this error: "You have chosen NOT to use Master Workers. We strongly encourage you to use Masters as these Workers have demonstrated accuracy in performing a wide range of HITs. Are you sure you want to continue?" "

" A few users have been alerting requesters to the fact Masters is default - they didn't know, and didn't know how to turn it off either. It's a big bruhaha at the moment. As a worker who has worked as a requester, I think Masters is a load of crap. I know some who have it who complete subpar work, and others who don't have it who are exceptional. The fact it's handed out so arbitrarily is also ridiculous. What's worse is those who don't have it have to complete CAPTCHAs, but Masters don't. Honestly, I think it's a big mess. "
​

TrevorNetmsi ( A @AdultNetHITs), an employee of a major requester who's actually had occasional personal communication with Amazon employees, has made a few comments about this topic before...

Aug 2013 - currently-invisible comment from him on Really? .04? Must be really hard. : mturk, retrieved from his comment history:

" Amazon is pushing Masters really hard. I can't talk to our Rep about anything without her bringing it up as a possible solution, even for our one cent HITs.

They get a higher percentage on Masters HITs, so they try to get Requesters to use them more. It's also set as the default now for people using the web interface, so new Requesters who don't know the system very well will be posting mostly Masters HITs (which will inevitably lead to a bunch of Turkers who worked hard to get Masters then get screwed over by a clueless new Requester). "​

 

[clickhappier]

The numbers:


The number of people displayed as 'Qualified Users' in the Qualifications search as having the three Masters quals, as is the case with some other unrelated quals, doesn't make a lot of sense. Many workers have some other quals that say 0 people have them; it must be that some ways of assigning quals don't update the displayed numbers properly. In the particular case of Masters, it's also possible/likely that Amazon could be intentionally padding the general 'Masters' number. Since the introduction of the general/generic Masters qual in Nov 2012, everyone who receives any seems to always receive all three (Masters, Photo Moderation Masters, and Categorization Masters) simultaneously (within minutes/hours); previously, they were awarded individually. So although we don't know for sure how many there really are, watching the numbers for relative changes is still informative. Some past numbers that have been reported:

On 2012-11-02, Frederick posted a screenshot on his blog: Categorization Masters: 2,405; Photo Moderation Masters: 3,160; Masters: 20,686

On 2012-12-05, Panos Ipeirotis posted on his blog: Masters: 20,744

On 2012-11-16, Pris257 posted on Reddit: Masters: 21,126

On 2013-01-02, prakashkl posted on MTF: Masters: 20,795; Categorization Masters: 2,522

On 2013-05-25, vaas posted on MTF: Masters: 20,896 'for the last several months'

On 2014-04-10, Jaded posted on MTG: Masters: 21,212

On 2014-04-17, mrtrentsd posted on MTG: "By my count the last time Masters was given was January 29. The count then went up to 21214. Now its at 21207."

On 2014-05-08, mrtrentsd posted on MTG: "(per my records) the last time the MASTERS count increased in the last week of January. It went up 8 to 21214. Ever since, it has slowly decreased. This week [down by 15] was the biggest drop."

On 2014-05-08, Auttrix posted on MTG: "Categorization Masters is also down 15 [to 3187]."

On 2014-05-12, adaaaam posted on MTG: "Math doesn't lie and it's not adding up, amazon fakes those numbers for marketing purposes" Categorization Masters: 3,225; Photo Moderation Masters: 3,935; Masters: 21,230

On 2014-08-19 (after the 2014-07-30 Masters additions, where I never saw someone post the new totals at the time, just an incomplete relative increase of at least 168), funnyboneisntsofunny posted on Reddit: "I was looking at my qualifications, and my masters qual says there are 21389 others with it." (Which is only up by 159, so there must have also been some losses in the weeks in between.)

On 2014-11-04, electrolyte posted on MTG that when a bunch of people received Masters that afternoon, the number went from "21373 to 21451", up by 78. (There had been several small reductions in the number over the previous few weeks.) Categorization Masters: 3,447; Photo Moderation Masters: 4,156; Masters: 21,451

On 2014-12-06, jklmnop posted on MTG that when a bunch of people received Masters that night, the number went from 21451 to 21641, up by 190. Categorization Masters: 3,637; Photo Moderation Masters: 4,346; Masters: 21,641

On 2014-12-30, jml posted on MTG that when a bunch of people received Masters that afternoon, the number went up by 220. Categorization Masters: 3,857; Photo Moderation Masters: 4,566; Masters: 21,861

On 2015-05-06, jml posted on MTG that the number of Masters went from 21862 (it had gone up by 1 some time in the last couple months, likely one who'd been revoked that they eventually decided to reinstate) to 22129, up by 267/268. Categorization Masters: 4,125; Photo Moderation Masters: 4,834; Masters: 22,129

On 2015-12-17, an unknown amount of people received Masters (only the 2nd time this calendar year).
​

My comment from Dec 10, 2015 about why we won't be able to know the qual numbers from now on:

"The MTurk programmers decided to screw around with a few random things today, which included taking away the ability for us to see how many people have which quals , so there will be no way to get any further updates on how many people get Masters, just 'some people said they got it this day but we have no idea how many total'. (And that's *if* they ever give it out again anyway, only been 1 time in all of 2015 so far... )"​

The international numbers:

There are reportedly a few non-US turkers who've received Masters, but it is very rare.

On 2012-06-11, sudesh posted on MTF that he had Masters. He had been "turking for more than 1 year" and had "more than 100 thousand hits", and his location was Tamil Nadu, India.

On 2013-06-17 (and location confirmation on 2013-07-08), vaas posted on MTF that he has a friend in India who received Masters in mid-June 2013. "He had only 97% approval rate. He is one in 17 masters selected in the previous week. ... Also he has $130+ bonus with total earnings of $640."

On 2014-08-24 (in the midst of a complaint about difficulties receiving payment by check, the only way Indian turkers can get their money outside of Amazon), VINAY posted on MTF that he had Masters.

On 2014-11-04, manzician posted on MTG and MTF that he'd just received Masters. He is located in India, and his stats were 198,558 approved at 99.9%. And on 2014-11-07, manzician posted on MTG, "So a survey was sent out for Masters workers in India. 2 more workers apart from me responded, they both had masters for more than 2 years." (presumably a HIT with "Qualifications: Masters has been granted, Location is IN")

And apparently one Indian worker has been seen in the private Masters forum, but I have no specifics and don't know whether they're the same person as one of the above.

On 2014-11-10, taintturk posted on TN: "I ran a survey for masters asking what their location is and when they got masters for international turkers only. Three days, two questions, only 6 responses."

In Aug 2014, Turkopticon member 'Goldfish' posted reviews indicating that he is located in India and has Masters.

On 2015-07-19, VINAYH posted on MTF that he's "a master user in Mturk", who went "inactive for almost a year" until he recently noticed that (since March 2015) Indian workers can now get direct deposits instead of waiting for mailed checks.

On 2015-12-26, Turkopticon member 'turking_seriuosly' (sic) posted a review mentioning "I think there are only a limited number of Masters from India like me."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The revocations:


It is also possible to lose Masters, for reasons that apparently include a secret 'accuracy' score, likely determined by AR-WA reviews.
(Update Jul 2016: The AR-WA HITs haven't been seen in several months AFAIK; Amazon might have stopped doing that. Or maybe they're just 'hidden' now...)

From trueakitalover at MTF, Sep 2013:

" What is the accuracy we must maintain to keep Masters Qualification?

Does anyone know what this requires for us to keep Masters? Does Mturk tell us what is high accuracy and low accuracy or how they calculate this? Shouldn't this be added to our dash board.

Why I am asking is that I get this email from them [saying my Masters quals were revoked due to accuracy]. They don't go by anything visible on our end that is very apparent on my end.

Here are my stats! Now I am sitting at a 99.7% acceptance rate yet they said my accuracy is not high enough. I am wondering if this is an unseen so you can't monitor it at all. Which technically speaking is wrong on their end. We should know what this accuracy level is. 99.7% is fairly good and 379 rejections is not bad for over 132,000 hits approved and accepted. I have contacted them and asked them where it states this in their policy what we must maintain. I am not a happy turker. I bet I get it back.

HITs Submitted: 132,522; Approved: 132,094, 99.7%; Rejected: 379, 0.3%; Pending: 49 "
​

Response from shalo at MTF, Sep 2013:

"I lost Masters with 100% approval. I did get a hard block but it was my first ever hard block. I had received warnings beforehand though and I have reached the conclusion that the stats aren't what they base it on and that they independently evaluate work."
​

Response from Marcus at MTF, Sep 2013:

" They monitor your work. Do not assume that you are doing good work just because all your work is getting approved. I know of some requesters that never reject but they do provide feedback and revoke their qualification if your work is not up to their standards.

Just as you earned masters, you can lose it. Amazon is definitely watching *some* of the HITs you complete. Your performance in these HITs is what can get you in trouble. Hard blocks and mass rejections are also likely to warrant warnings. "
​

From Jak at MTG, Oct 2013:

"Has anyone actually lost their Masters qual after receiving one of those accuracy warnings? I just got one."
​

Response from margin at MTG, Oct 2013:

"Yeah but people have not lost it after getting more than one, and lost it without warning."
​

Response from Jaded at MTG, Oct 2013:

"even though I've seen people lose their masters after getting that email, I've also known people to get it several times and not lose their masters."
​

From Christinexx at MTF, Jul 2014:

"My masters was revoked ye[t] I haven't had but one reject in months? I had two block in 3 months though. Does anyone know about getting it back? This is really upsetting."

"i got a warning about a month ago but hadnt had any rejects at the time. I was doing mostly masters hits."

"And my score was actually going up if they mean my approval rating."

" Hello,
We regret to inform you that you no longer qualify as a Master due to a decrease in your HIT accuracy. Please note that you will no longer be able to access the Masters forum. If your accuracy increases, you may be eligible to receive the Masters Qualification again.
Regards,
The Mechanical Turk Team "
​

From paveldatsyuk at MTG, Jul 2014:

"I think you have to mess up really bad to get it [Masters] taken away. I don't think it's lack of activity, either, since I took 3 3-day weekends in a row and 1 week off entirely in the past month-ish and I still have it."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The oopsies:


Amazon sometimes seems to make mistakes in sending out Masters notifications - early, late, incomplete, completely mistaken...:

On 2013-06-22, katmandu posted on MTF: "So yesterday, I checked my email like I do everyday. I received three emails, one congratulating me for getting Photo Moderation Masters, one congratulating me for Categorization Masters, and one on how to sign up for the extra special Masters forum. With visions of dollar signs dancing in my head, I go on Mturk for my first day as a Master. Hmph. Can't accept any. Still saying I don't have the qualification. So I log off and log back on. Still denied. Log off, delete cookies, and restarted computer. Still no. Sent message to Amazon. Logged off and spent time with family. Woke up this morning, nope qualification still not there. Has this ever happened to anyone? Is there sometimes a delay? Or did Amazon possibly send me the emails by mistake (which would be very cruel)?"
And update two days later: "Well, still can't accept the Master HITs. I got a generic "we have no way of checking to see what the status of requesters qualifications but you can search for HITs you can do" message from Amazon so I sent them another. I'm really confused at this point."

On 2013-06-22, sockozz posted on MTF: "my Masters didn't go into effect until about 24hrs after receiving the email from Amazon."

On 2014-01-22, ScottB posted on MTG: "Did anyone else who already has Masters get an e-mail? I got it back in October and just got the whole sequence of e-mails again..." and "that plus the new Masters not having access to the HITs is making me worry something may be horribly wrong with Amazon." [several more people had similar experiences]

On 2014-01-22, Jaded posted on MTG: "The number didn't go up on the masters qual page either. I think y'all just got trolled by amazon. (just kidding that would be terrible.)" [a few hours later they were able to do Masters HITs]

On 2014-01-22, ZinGy posted on MTG: "Oh shit, didnt amaswan fuck that up the other day. Where they took masters away from people and gave it back. that would suck if the emails were sent out in error, iirc the qual should be applied to your account even before you get the email. I had it a couple of minutes earlier and so did electrolyte"

On 2014-01-22, jekjek posted on MTG: "The emails are lagging I just got the photo one 45 mins after the cat one"

On 2014-05-11, Blue posted on MTG: "Amazon trolled me HARD today. So when all the masters emails went out I checked my own email and found an invitation from an mturk.com email address to the masters forum. Did a triple take... I GOT MASTERS HOLY SHIT... wait all day... no other emails... wait longer still no emails, still getting captchas, still can't accept any masters hits... ... Must have been some kind of error, its been damn near 12 hours now since that email arrived. I've logged out and back in... sent an email to amazon... logged off to /ragequit around the house for a while... I crossed the $20k made milestone last week or the week before... 140k hits submitted... 49 rejections. I think I've proven I'm not a damn bot by now."

On 2014-07-30, arsi posted on MTG: "I haven't gotten an email [about receiving Masters yet], but I was searching what I was qualified for and a bunch more stuff popped up - checked my quals and it's there..."

On 2014-07-30, leftfield posted on MTG: "that's how I found out I had mine. Me and a couple other people got it and thought mturk was broke and letting us do masters HITs."

On 2014-07-30, boardwalkumpire posted on MTF: "Did anyone who already has masters just get the emails too? I guess I now have double super secret masters."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The theories, part 1:


From Adare at mTurk Wiki, Mar 2013:

" There is no clear outline as to how a turker gets a Master qual. However, there are things you can do that would certainly help your chances of obtaining it.
- Participate in a wide range of HITs. Transcriptions, categorization tasks, and surveys are just a small sample of what you can do on Mturk.
- Do a large number of HITs. The more HITs you do daily, the better your chances.
- Keep your approval percentage high. No one wants a master with a 95% approval rate. Keep it at 98% or above.
- Take advantage of all the available qualifications you can request. The more quals you have, the more HITs you can do. More HITs = Better chances of becoming a Master.
- It doesn't matter how many times you request the Master qual. It is not going to work.

There is no specific number of approved HITs or time signed up on Mturk for this qual. Some have gotten it at under 10K HITs approved, while others are over 80K and still waiting for it. "
​

From MTF users in the "Masters Theories" thread, Jun 2013:

Cowfin: "Golden Batch." "That's the theory that Amazon posts a batch with known answers, or incorporates known answers into a batch, through an unrelated requester account and awards masters to the top performers."

Electrolyte: "NOT account longevity, that's for sure."

razorbacks0121: "And the theory is also Amazon always gave the Masters out on Thursday, until everyone started posting the game plan in the forum. Then the developer changed it up on you, and threw you for a curve ball last night. "

Electrolyte: " For the record, here's what has been shared with me:
Some Monday in November, 2012 (Monday)
12/06/2012 (Thursday)
12/27/2012 (Thursday) - 21 days in between
01/04/2013 (Friday) - 8 days in between
01/17/2013 (Thursday) - 13 days in between
01/24/2013 (Thursday) - 7 days in between
02/04/2013 (Monday) - 11 days in between
02/15/2013 (Friday) - 11 days in between
03/29/2013 (Friday) - 42 days in between
04/11/2013 (Thursday) - 13 days in between
05/09/2013 (Thursday) - 28 days in between
06/15/2013 (Saturday) - 37 days in between "

summerstars: "my theory is that it's either random or that there are gold hits, however, the hits only flag you as being master-worthy. They then watch you for a little while to make sure. Also, the hits aren't in just one batch but spread out around multiple batches."

ds_36: "I'm sure it has something to do with some specific HITs that Amazon Requester posts and if pass some magical threshold on them you become a master."

TAC: "I think it's random, there isn't any proof it's linked to anything. I've read about someone getting it after only 6 weeks of turking while others who have months or years of doing this and tens of thousands of approved HITs doesn't get it. Makes zero sense. You don't earn a masters, it's a gift."

zingy: "I still believe the golden batch theory is true, they wouldn't just randomly assign a qualification since requestors pay money to post HITS, they would want at least somewhat decent workers working on those HITS. They gauge performance with those batches more than likely."

Marcus: "I believe they have multiple golden batches, not just one. Depending on performance over a few months, they give the qual out. Once you have masters, below average performance on these batches will cause a revocation."

delirium: "I've had weeks where I've turned in 500+ HITs per day, weeks where I've skipped days, months where I've worked on anything and everything and never skipped a single day, and recently I've been ill so I was away from mturk for a couple weeks straight and just recently came back...still no masters here. I gotta go with either its completely random or there are special batches triggering them possibly watching your account and then maybe monitoring/measuring all your other stats from that point on."

zingy: "People have gotten the qual on as little as 6k approved and some of them didn't grind out large batches" "other people have submitted a large amount of HITS over a short period of time... they have no masters."

kcasepr: " I think it is an activity scoring system. MTurk website can see almost everything we do. They can track what tasks we view, work, skip, return, and submit. They can also see what requesters we email(contact forms) and if it is about a specific hit or hit group. So having recently been granted masters a little bit after changing my habits due to productrnr kicking me from adult content review hits, I have a theory. It isn't about submitting huge amount of hits. That I'm sure of.
My theory: It is about sampling and possibly viewing a large variety of hits, submitting a regular large number of hits that need not be huge amount or large variety, and regularly communicating with the requester such as giving feedback, reporting issues, and asking questions. After all these are all behaviors that companies would like to see in employees in any workplace. "

dkatina: "I will just add that is not related to the number of HITs. I have 270,029 with a 100% rating (some rejects but Amazon averages it up). I don't have masters. I think it's because I primarily do HITs for only one requester."

Charlie Turkelly: "the algorithm itself grew out of Amazon's control and became something comparable to an infinite improbability drive, granting masters qualifications to random turkers at random times."

lunarobverse: "So I went and did a search for HITs that required Masters qualifications, found one HIT for each type of qual (Masters, Photo Categorization Masters and Categorization Masters) and bookmarked the links to request them. I put them all in a folder in my Bookmarks Bar, and when I'm bored or between batches, I right-click on them and open them all in a new window. I'm doing this on the theory, posted yesterday (sorry, I forgot who) that Amazon grants Masters qual to whoever's at the top of the request queue. It's not having X number of HITs, or a certain percentage in Returns or Approvals, or any of that. It's just a matter of being on the top of the list when the employee at Amazon goes to look at who's getting Masters that day."

aphotic: "For what it's worth, I never requested any Masters qualifications before I received mine."
​

From Gingasaurus at MTG, Apr 2014:

"Re: Masters discussion: One of my long-standing theories is that Amazon doesn't have set criteria. It seems every time it's handed out they've changed something, from the times before. It's all a big experiment to see which demographic, hit amounts, approval/return/etc. rates, hit-type preference, etc. produces the highest quality work. One day (I don't really believe this) there will be "Super Masters" when they figure it all out "
​

From Henrik at MTG, May 2014:

"Masters is likely a sliding-scale algorithm they adujst based on the types of HITs coming in and the number of active workers doing Masters HITs of certain types. In other words, it's a very complex formula and no one on our end has the data to figure it out."
​

From Kerek at MTG, Jul 2014:

"my wacky theory is they only review your account every X months or X masters review sessions, which might help explain why people get it in a certain time period or don't until way later. And because I doubt they wanted to or did review the same stupid hundreds or thousands of accounts every week last fall when it kept being given out."
​

From ZinGy at MTG, Jul 2014:

"This all started last summer where I would try a bunch of weird fucking theories on how masters was given out. I tried taking breaks for extended periods of time, working on specific HITs, getting as many quals etc. I'm just a regular turker trying to expose amazon for their shit, all my ideas are just theories. Right now I think it has to do something with Social, account demo's, and maybe possibly arwa. I have a pretty good idea on how masters is revoked too, but its all just an idea."
​

From turkalufagus at MTG, Jul 2014:

"When they doled out masters every week, several people would gather new masters stats and in the end, none of the theories panned out, including demographics. There's a minimum threshold with a lottery. It's the only logical explanation...ugh, I'm done talking about it."
​

From Beavis at MTG, Jul 2014:

"I think the most reasonable way I can understand the Masters process has to do with demographics. Say a 28 year old white male with Masters has his qual revoked or becomes inactive, they find another 28 year old white male with 5k+ HITs and a solid approval rating to "take his place." They at least have all this information since they have our socials."
​

From ZinGy at MTG, Jul 2014:

"They have your address, name, DOB, and SSN right when you make your mturk/amazon payments account."
​

Some workers suspect that certain batches from certain requesters might be scrutinized more closely than others in determining Masters (who might receive it, and who might lose it). Some workers are suspicious of some quals they've received unexpectedly from requesters they don't think they've worked for before, related to such batches. From MTG, Jul 2014:

ZinGy: "That requester [Social Photo] posted last year [2013] in October and it had a closed qualification on it with no explanation on how I received it. Never worked for them before and they are an established requester since like 2011 so its unlikely they transferred over worker id's and applied quals. The batch I did was before October 20th, 2013. I received Masters on Oct 24th 2013. ... I won't do those hits ever again after I got that first qualification back then pre-masters."

DCI: "They are a little strange/suspicious with their always even 50 batches, but the instructions for them are pretty clear at least, so I'm not too worried about them"

Cristo: "I'm all paranoid now I'll leave the 2 bucks there."

ZinGy: "That's my reasoning as well, its only like $2-4 each time they go up, I rather not take the risk that I believe might be a possibility."

Cristo: "I all ready avoid anything I think could be Amazon and make plenty of money. I'm not going to lose any sleep over one more thing. 1st World Master Problems, Amazon booby traps."

leftfield: "That's strange, I had almost the same thing happen when I got masters too. I got a qual for something that was by the AMT account ['Amazon Requester Inc - browse classification'] that does all the cat master batches for .06. I did like 100 and got masters the same week."

DCI: "An evaluation HIT isn't guaranteed to be a negative free roll for your account standing though. There is some likelihood that it could even help you to have good evaluation results if your account was under review sometime down the road for some other reason. That's why I worry a lot more about clear instructions than I do about which requesters are Amazon. If I can do something with confidence that I'm doing it right then I just don't worry about it a whole lot. The times that I've ran into trouble were always with stuff that had some subjectivity, bad instructions, etc."

Cristo: "Mine came after an odd TOTW matching task. I was done for the day but people on the board were saying "do these TOTW there is something fishy about them". Got Masters [in Jan 2014] with Unsupn and a bunch of others TOTW people after that."

jekjek: "me too! we're master bros cause we got masters the same day. It was DCI who told us to do the totw matchings"

ZinGy: "so how many of you new masters have worked for social photo? I already found out from two people that they have back in June and got masters today"

silverpony: "2014-06-12 - Social Photo - Choose the best category for this product - $0.02 - Paid. Looks like I did 50 of those [and received Masters]."

Tribune: "Social Photo TO. I did exactly 100 HITs for them, 6/13 and 6/16 [and got Masters today]."

DeliriumTremens: "I only did 49 Social Photos and didn't get Masters. I sware on me mum, if I didn't get it because I only did 49 instead of 50..."

Jaded: "I did Social Photo back in June as well. 100 of them. Guess I sucked :'( "

aveline: "I did 50 [Social Photo] and I didn't get anything, either."

ZinGy: "Theres probably other criteria to it. I refuse to believe it's random so I try to see what weird things happen in mturkland. Getting a qualification from a requester you've never worked for before and one that's been around since 2011 (close to the date masters was created) is pretty fucking weird."

derek573: "Just to jump on the Social Photo Conspiracy Train I did 99 back on 6/13 [and got Masters today]"

Vishuz.Manuva: "FWIW, I did 50 on the 13th of June. No Masters here either. I'm more confident it all has mostly to do with demographics."

ZinGy: " [re: Social Photo being a test for Masters] That's what I'm thinking, but like everyone else I don't know how Amazon operates. All I know is that to receive a qualification from a requester I never worked for before is not impossible, you can assign quals to workers who've never worked for you through CLT (command line tools)
So they got my worker ID from somewhere, not a hit obviously. As a requester you can make a new account and assign quals to workers with CLT, but it just doesn't make sense that a requester from 2011 did that with some of us on that batch from back then. To add more suspicion to it, I got masters after doing that batch.
Like I said though, I really don't know if they played a part in masters. Getting that qual is definitely not "normal". "

pyrojeff: "I think the same thing happened to me also, I had their [Social Photo] "spqcat1" qual for some reason even though I had never worked for them before. pretty sure I got masters about the same time as you [ZinGy] too."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The theories, part 2:


From SKB at MTG, Aug 2014:

"a good friend of mine used to be a VP at Amazon. I asked him about it and he of course had no clue. He had only vaguely heard about Amazon Turk. No shocker here but we are not a big priority for the company. He did look into it and what he told me was that it is literally a lottery. They have a minimum on certain things that you need to be at and then when they need a certain amount of Masters Quals added the computer just randomly spits out some IDs that fit the bill. There is no "Golden Hit", no anything but random luck."
​

Response from Jan at MTG, Aug 2014:

"then how do people lose it? I get it when they screw up and get blocks - but some folks have lost it for no good reason (or at least without a very good reason)."
​

Response from SKB at MTG, Aug 2014:

"The truth of that is probably somewhere in between the fact that Amazon does not really give a fuck about us and you never really know the whole story when people talk about losing it. I do know that I have heard of a few people losing it for inactivity, some for bank errors, and others "for no reason". Well, there is always a reason, whether us as workers would agree with it being a good reason is a whole different can of beans."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The lucky and unlucky stats, part 1:


Examples of people's stats/activities when they have or haven't received Masters; not every example that's ever been posted, but enough to show the lack of a consistent pattern:

On 2012-06-01, melissa71642 posted on MTF: "NOBODY KNOWS how or why they get masters, they just do. I've got the useless photo masters, but I've never really worked on a lot of photo hits, so it's a mystery."

On 2012-06-01, carebear posted on MTF: "I have over 120,000 submitted Hits at 100% [and haven't received Masters]."

On 2012-08-21, Stlrfn posted on MTF: "I agree on the doing hits regularly not having anything to do with it. I turk pretty much everyday. When I do it is well over 100 hits each day. I have 280,000+ approved and a 99.7% approval rate. But I don't have the master qual. Not real sure on the AR [Amazon Requester Inc.] hits either. I have done tons of them and received the qual upgrade a long time ago and still... no masters. The problem is, I don't think it is any ONE thing. AMT may be sneaky at times but they are not stupid. More then likely it is doing A + B + C + D = masters. Some masters recall doing A and some B, C or D... but nobody has quite figured out what all those variables are together."

On 2012-09-09, Stlrfn posted on MTF: "the masters qual ... is the only way to get rid of them [captchas]. There is no magic hit number that gets you there. I know of a turker with 750,000+ hits that still has captchas. Sorry."

On 2012-11-02, Frederick posted on his blog: "I have a 99.9% approval rating and 22,000 approved HITs [and haven't received Masters]."

On 2013-03-21, palani88 posted on MTF: "How to get Master Qualification. Can any one tell how to get this? I am trying two years still now I am not able to get this. My approval rate is 99.5% and did 80000 and above hits..."

On 2013-03-21, HaikuGemini posted on MTF: "my approval rating was 99% and I had completed 79000 hits when I received masters [two months ago]. I do a lot of amazon inc. hits."

On 2013-03-21, aphotic posted on MTF: "I got it in January. My stats at the time were about 9,700 Approved HITs, 99.9% approval, 8 or 9 rejects, 2.5% returned, 0.5% abandoned. I never did any Amazon Inc HITs before getting Masters. I just did the same HITs everyone else did in the daily Great HITs thread: surveys, Rubin, Set Master, Two Lakes, etc."

On 2013-04-23, Khalinov posted on MTF: "I have been turking since 2008 and I do not have Masters (100K+ approved, 99.6%). I won’t touch porn/photo mod HITs or transcription HITs and I suspect that might play a part. But that is only a guess."

On 2013-04-23, Flora posted on MTF: "There's someone here that's only been here 3 weeks and he got it already. He did high amount of HITS per day. I think that's what did it."

On 2013-04-23, Kris posted on MTF: "I got it after about 5 months doing mostly surveys, batches and ClariTrans transcriptions. I'm on and off throughout the day and usually make about $20 or so a day"

On 2013-04-23, aphotic posted on MTF: "Some people have been turking years and don't have it. Some people have gotten it within a couple of months. I registered in 2011 but didn't really do much. I think I made like $20. I started heavily turking in Sept 2012. I got Masters in January 2013. I had about 9500 approved with 99.9% approval rating. I don't do photo moderation HITs and only dabbled in transcription, so most of my HITs were surveys and batches. mturk is mostly my main source of income at the moment, so I turk between 6-10 hours a day."

On 2013-04-23, ArtistsForHire posted on MTF: "I got Masters when it first rolled out, and I'd been turking for......less than a year. I think a lot of it was a high volume of hits, low paying hits entered quickly. Never did transcription."

On 2013-05-26, seaboardavenue posted on MTF: "There's several people that only had 6,500 HITs approved when they received it, and I know two that did less than 100 HITs a day."

On 2013-05-26, TurtleTape posted on MTF: "I've never seen someone screenshot their dashboard after getting masters who does over 1000/day, usually it's between 3-500/day for a week or two at a time."

On 2013-10-24, ZinGy posted on MTG: "I have a feeling this [getting Masters today] has to do with the inactivity I was having, I wasn't doing a lot of Venue Quality or anything like that" (later posted more details of that week's activities on 2014-04-30) and "Here are my stats. I have been out of the mturk loop for about 3 weeks now and just this week is when I starting really going back into it. When I was putting up the forum I was randomly hitting like $5-20 and some days $0. (stats from screenshot: ) HITs Submitted: 38971; Approved: 38544, 99.9%; Rejected: 20, 0.1%; Pending: 407. HITs Accepted: 40862; Submitted: 38971, 95.4%; Returned: 1810, 4.4%; Abandoned: 81, 0.2%."

On 2013-10-24, delerium posted on MTG: "I just wish they'd tell us what we need to do. I had whole months where I barely made $75 because I was sick and had multiple times where I didn't turk for several days at a time and still no masters here."

On 2013-10-25, HappyLittleTrees posted on MTG: "I had only done 3 Venue Quality's before I got it [Masters] a couple of weeks ago."

On 2013-11-15, symbiotic242 posted on Reddit: "I have 100k HITS done and 99.9% approval - I've given up hope for masters."

On 2013-11-21, IvanaTinkle0 posted on Reddit: "I'm in the same boat as you. 80k submitted with a 99.9% approval rating and no Masters."

On 2013-12-19, danawhitaker posted on MTG: "As an early adopter of Mturk, frequent rejections were commonplace. My rejections are at 950 (out of 220k+). I got Masters in July." "I believe it [approval rating when I got masters] was around 99.4 - currently I'm sitting at 99.6."

On 2013-12-22, JØØ¢y posted on MTG: "RNR was (keyword: was) awesome for me before I got Masters. I'm still convinced they're the reason I even got the Masters qual in the first place lol"

On 2014-01-22, unspunreality posted on MTG: "Congratulations! You have earned the Masters qualification for Categorization. ... HOLY SHIT. I KNEW RNRS WOULD DO THIS FOR ME." and "HITs Submitted: 32922; Approved: 32422, 100.0%; Rejected: 9, 0.0% ... All Ive done is about 15$ of RNR per day, I did personagraphs lately which is where 7 rejects came from. And a bunch of CS when they were up. Nothing else to speak about aside from random surveys. I never did more then 20$ish a day of work though." and "Oh, Ive also done some amazon requestors. But I doubt that's it."

On 2014-01-22, amy257 posted on MTG: "I FINALLY GOT MASTERS!!!!!!! It only took one years and 140k hits. ... And the only thing I have been doing differently these past two weeks is venues." and "My stats are something in the 140k approved with 115 rejections. And funny that you should mention rnr. Other than the batch I hit this morning, I haven't done any. But I have been doing a ton of venue's lately" and "Masters is a total crap shoot. I have 140k approved hits with a 99.9% approval rating. They were handing it out like crazy in nov/dec. I was mainly working on totw back then. This past month, I have been doing everything and anything because it was so slow. The only consistent thing I did was venues 4-5 days a week around 5-6. I hit a few RNR caption batches these last two weeks. And a bunch of .05/.07 this morning."

On 2014-01-22, jekjek posted on MTG: "me too ... obligatory stats that got me masters: (screenshot: ) HITs Submitted: 99853; Approved: 99584, 100.0%; Rejected: 34, 0.0%; Pending: 235. HITs Accepted: 102802; Submitted: 99853, 97.1%; Returned: 2655, 2.6%; Abandoned: 292, 0.3%." [this was before the detailed accepted/returned/abandoned data was removed from the dashboard]

On 2014-01-22, Kerek posted on MTG: "[re: RnR=Masters theory] Eh. 10277 RnRs completed [without receiving Masters] says otherwise."

On 2014-01-22, Dmillan posted on MTG: "I don't think that is how it works. I have over 10 k in rnr and still nothing yet."

On 2014-01-22, Cristo posted on MTG: "[Just received Masters and] I haven't done rnrs in months, hard block from Venue Quality but I do have the 50 qual from TOTW. (screenshot: ) HITs Submitted: 52014; Approved: 51921, 99.9%; Rejected: 77, 0.1%; Pending: 16. HITs Accepted: 55953; Submitted: 52014, 93.0%; Returned: 3892, 7.0%; Abandoned: 47, 0.1%."

On 2014-01-22, Gingasaurus posted on MTG: "I'm starting to give some credence to that "taking a break theory" I hadn't worked at all since like Dec 22nd and came back and did like 200 ARIs and 200 Personas this week and boom [I got Masters]."

On 2014-01-22, TissueHime posted on MTG: "i can say first hand, it's [getting Masters] not because of the ARI [Amazon Requester Inc.] hits."

On 2014-01-28, Cristo posted on MTG: "I've had an active block for over 6 months but I got Masters this round. Edit 7 months and 6 days."

On 2014-01-28, kid clutch posted on MTG: "I got 3 but they are spread over the course of about 6months, and i got masters"

On 2014-02-06, MissMacleod posted on MTG: "337 [quals] here. Sadly, no masters, though "

On 2014-02-06, sssstaticccc posted on MTG: "I got masters at 65,000 hits. quals have less to do with it, I only have 99"

On 2014-02-06, Lepi posted on MTG: "I got masters at like 14k. I don't think it's necessarily to do with the number of approved HITs. I think they can see in to your soul or something."

On 2014-02-17, sikk66 posted on MTG: "I didn't get it until after I was over 100k approved HITs. Some people get it at 10k(or less). But it seems like most people who turk regularly do eventually get it. I thought I was never going to."

On 2014-02-17, Blue posted on MTG: "I'm coming up on my 1 year mark here very soon... over 100k approved... over $16k... I used to complain about not getting Masters but I have since settled into just doing my thing and not worrying about it."

On 2014-04-17, ZinGy posted on MTG: "One person getting it because of certain circumstances doesn't break the theory. The only thing that IMO is set in stone is having at leeeeast 5k, there were two other people that got it at 3k/4k, but that was like a one time thing I think"

On 2014-04-17, Riddik78 posted on MTG: "I just passed 100k approved hits! Where's my damn masters!!"

On 2014-04-17, 'J D' posted on MTG: "I have worked on 1200 different requesterIds [and haven't received Masters]" "my stats: HITs Submitted: 78158; Approved: 77235, 99.8%; Rejected: 131, 0.2%"

On 2014-04-17, Jaded posted on MTG: "Oh I know, 2231 different requesterIds [and haven't received Masters]"

On 2014-04-17, tiffanys posted on MTG: "Over 12000 Hits here, 1000 different requesters, only 4 rejections. Took a few months off and came back, no masters. :/ "

On 2014-05-02, Gingasaurus posted on MTG: "I had 18 rejections when I got masters [on Jan 22, 2014] and even that is still lower than what I've seen from some others."

On 2014-05-02, ZinGy posted on MTG: "I remember someone receiving a hard block email on the same day that they received masters, in the past none of that stuff imo affects whether or not they give out the prize."

On 2014-05-08, Hingle McCringleberry posted on MTG: "In the last 3 months I've done about 30,000 HITs with 1 reject. Have over 85,000 Approved with 28 total rejects (99.97%). If anyone deserves masters it's me... maybe... I guess. I would certainly hope so" and "Back on mtf ... I might have been around 35-40k and people with less than 10k hits that had been on mturk for just a few months were getting masters golden tickets left and right. Very frustrating"

On 2014-05-08, Jaded posted on MTG: "Last year around this time (I had just started) We got a influx of masters, lots of people near 5k usually every week we were getting masters."

On 2014-05-08, sofaslug posted on MTG: "I only did about 10 total RnR hits before I got my Masters."

On 2014-05-12, Stephica posted on MTG: "I just got masters for for Categorization and Photos. I haven't turked in months since I started my second job!"

On 2014-05-12, paveldatsyuk posted on MTG: "[Just received Masters, with] Approved: 7758, 99.9%; Rejected: 4, 0.1%. I'm honestly a survey guy. I have lots of survey requesters I prefer on my page monitor thingy and I just do surveys that pay more than a dollar 90% of the time. I've been turking since 2012 but this hasn't been my main form of online income."

On 2014-06-02, Aurica posted on MTG: "I'd like to know exactly why I don't have masters with nearly 150,000 approved HITs, when people get masters with 5,000 approved HITs, or just by doing nothing but RnRs. :/ If I knew why I wasn't getting masters, I could do something differently. But, for all we know, it isn't even based on performance."
​

 

[clickhappier]

The lucky and unlucky stats, part 2:


More examples of people's stats/activities when they have or haven't received Masters; not every example that's ever been posted, but enough to show the lack of a consistent pattern:

On 2014-07-30, MissMacleod posted on MTG: "88,499 HITs and no masters here. I have given up hoping, sigh. I do think it has something to do with demographics though."

On 2014-07-30, silverpony posted on MTG: "I got masters and just started turking in Jan. HITs Submitted: 6916; Approved: 6892, 99.8%; Rejected: 15, 0.2%"

On 2014-07-30, 'J D' posted on MTG: "(from images: ) Still waiting for Master. HITs Submitted: 201291; Approved: 199411, 99.8%; Rejected: 362, 0.2%; Pending: 1518"

On 2014-07-30, JiveTurkin posted on MTG: "I just got masters! Woohoo! (with screenshot)" and "HITs Submitted: 3127; Approved: 3074"

On 2014-07-30, ZinGy posted on MTG: "I know of one person who got to 9k right after starting out and got masters after like 6 weeks or so."

On 2014-07-30, irelay posted on MTF: "I'm not posting this to make anyone jealous, just going for the name of accuracy in reporting these things but I too got the Masters qualification today. I've been turking for 13 months, 3405 submitted, 100% accuracy (1 rejection)."

On 2014-07-31, Looper posted on MTG: "Wait... someone with 3k approved got masters? MEanwhile I'm on my way to 100k with 1 fucking rejection and I got nada? Life is so not fair. "

On 2014-07-31, Blue posted on MTG: "it took me over a year and more than 200k hits to get masters in this last batch [Jul 30, 2014]."

On 2014-08-23, Narwhalicorn posted on MTG: "HITs Submitted: 349639; Approved 348297, 100.0%; Rejected: 96, 0.0%. Still in the non-master's club."
​

 

[clickhappier]

Advice for new Masters


Here's a good summary of advice for new masters, from Jask99 in the 12/31/14 MTG daily thread:

" NEW MASTERS,
Just a couple pieces of advice, that I thought I would share as I just got it the previous round.
1. The Best thing about Masters is no captcha
2. Not every HIT that is Masters is worth doing, just as non-master hits
3. Many NEW requesters use the Master requirement, thus you get a lot of unknown.
4. As a result of #3, you run a higher risk of rejections, PAD YOUR NUMBERS with pennies
5. Quals are still your best friend.
6. The forum you got invited to in the e-mail is safely ignored "​

 

[clickhappier]

Masters Humor


@Spam Squirrel shared the real secret on 2/28/15 when someone asked how to get Masters.

" On the night of the harvest moon you must sleep with a receipt in your pocket and a business card under your pillow, then the next day you must wash Jeff bozos car with a kleenex.

Really no one knows for sure, it's kinda random. some people get it at 2k hits, other are over a half million and don't have it. "​

Spoiler: more silly ritual jokes

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

From @summerstars on 5/7/15: comic of an Amazon office meeting about Masters

"It has come to my attention that we have not given out the master's qual in 5 months."
"Let's pick names out of a hat!"
"Let a monkey pick Mturk IDs!"
"How about we take worker history, approvals, quals, and earnings into account?"
[angry boss throws the last guy out the window]
​

Funny video along similar lines but from the workers' perspective, which I think is from MTF user beactivelife:

Mturk Masters Qualification - YouTube
(adult language caution)



Another couple of insights into the Masters selection process , from me and swirlgirl :

 

[clickhappier]

That time a suspended turker got Masters

On 2015-05-06, jml posted on MTG that the number of Masters went from 21862 (it had gone up by 1 some time in the last couple months, likely one who'd been revoked that they eventually decided to reinstate) to 22129, up by 267/268. Categorization Masters: 4,125; Photo Moderation Masters: 4,834; Masters: 22,129

The 5/6/15 awarding included someone receiving Masters despite their account having been suspended for months due to blocks.
http://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/3573gu/the_hilarity_ensuesjust_got_mastersbut_im/

I thought you guys would be interested to know that. I've been suspended for 2 months with no word back from mturk because of a few blocks, but just received masters.

... Actually, I think this says something about communication - or the lack thereof - between Amazon's departments. ...

I remember OP's suspension thread. He/she tried to get unsuspended and failed. I sincerely doubt it was a matter of communication, or that there are more than a handful of employees dedicated to Mturk.

OP was likely suspended due to an automated process (2 of his 4 blocks were people who were just blocking to prevent survey retakes) and got master's due to an automated process as well. There is no one at the wheel over at Mturk. That's why we don't even get a phone number for customer support.

A lack of adequate thought in building those automated processes, then. They omitted the 'if accountstatus != suspended' before the 'masters = true'

... This suggests to me that there is some sort of automatic index score for each worker.

Given that a bunch of people are reporting receiving Master's recently, I suspect that there is the equivalent of a list of highest-scoring workers somewhere that Amazon pulls from when demand requires it. ...

After extensive study, I doubt it's even that involved (unfortunately, or it would be fairer than it's been). I think Masters (and/or quals to secret pre-masters batches which they might not have done this time) is just given out on a lottery (random) basis to anyone who has at least 99.0% approved and is past a varying threshold of number of HITs approved and account age... And I'm leaning towards the existence of large underpaid masters batches that sit for a while leading to the triggering of at least some of the rounds of giving it out. A huge underpaid masters 'find the real estate agent photos' batch sat for weeks in Nov-Dec around when they gave out Masters 3x, and a smaller pile of that same batch reappeared in Apr-May and sat for a week or so, not long before this round.

 

[clickhappier]

How to remove the default Masters requirement from a HIT in the Requester GUI


From 3/5/15:

Spoiler: the process until some time in Dec 2015

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

Update 12-30-2015: @Tjololo noticed today that Amazon has actually unhidden the Masters-removal option - it's now on the first screen of the HIT configuration interface - and it no longer has the rude warnings about not using Masters when you turn it off!

The mouseover text for the "Who are Mechanical Turk Masters?" pseudo-link says: "Mechanical Turk has built technology which analyzes Worker performance, identifies high performing Workers, and monitors their performance over time. Workers who have demonstrated excellence across a wide range of HITs are awarded the Masters Qualification. Masters must continue to pass our statistical monitoring to retain the Mechanical Turk Masters Qualification."
(So they're not scaremongering about turning it off like they were before, yay.)

 

[clickhappier]

Experiences asking requesters to stop using Masters

(See also: how to remove the default Masters requirement from a HIT in the Requester GUI)


An experienced worker symbiotic242 posted on Reddit in July 2015 about how they'd been singlehandedly waging a massive campaign contacting THOUSANDS of inexperienced requesters to tell them about this (how they might not even realize it's on there or what it means, much less how to remove it), and quotes some of the requesters' responses: https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/3d66yd/mturk_masters_to_cost_a_mere_35_to_41_percent/ct27jmv

Unfortunately, the masters qualification is a cleverly-disguised marketing ploy by Amazon designed to squeeze extra money from the Requester with no discernible benefits.

I have been a worker for nearly 5 years (290,000+ approved HITs, 99.99% approval rating, no masters qualification) and a Requester for 2 years.

Employing the masters qualification is a disservice to Requesters and workers alike. It is a disservice to Requesters because they face a severely limited worker pool, pay a premium fee and often do not get the volume of responses they require, rendering the data collection unusable.

It is a disservice to workers like me, who, despite outstanding work performance am excluded from a lot of great work.

Amazon makes the masters qualification a default setting the Requester UI, preying on the ignorance of new Requesters. They make the setting difficult to find, effectively forcing unwitting requesters to use it.

As a requester, I have received much better results using a combination of total approved HITs and HIT approval rating as qualifications then using just the masters qualification.

Not to say the masters qualified workers are bad; there are many great workers who have the masters qualification, and many poor workers who hold the qualification. There are many great workers who do not hold it.

In the time I have been using Mechanical Turk, I have seen the following:
- workers with less than 3000 approved HITs receive the masters qualification
- workers with low approval ratings receive the masters qualification
- a workers who set up a second account (under a friends name) just to take surveys multiple times - that second account was granted the masters qualification
- the masters quals are always granted in groups of 3 - I have seen workers who have never done a photo moderation task in their life be granted the Photo Moderation Master qualification (this one is especially telling - Amazon would lead you to believe the Photo Moderation Masters have actually done Photo mod tasks)
- I have seen workers with less than 6 weeks experience be granted the masters qualification.
- I have seen a worker receive the masters qualifications months after their account was permanently suspended

Over the past 18 months, I have messaged over 8000 new requesters who were (generally unwittingly) using the masters qualification. Nearly 5000 of them opted to discontinue using the masters qualification.

Here are some select responses I have received in reply to my message:

"Holy crap thank you so much for letting me know. They hide that setting completely when you’re setting up HITs! I never would have known and I wouldn’t have gotten my HITs finished. How infuriating and disrespectful to both requesters and workers. "

"Thank you for letting me know! I was wondering why it was taking forever to get to the 500 needed for my sample"

"This is incredibly helpful information. I really don't need just masters, especially since this is a survey about what people think. I thought the 30% to amazon seemed high, that money would be better served going to higher worker payments."

"Thank you so much for your input! I did not realize the task was set to require Masters (and was wondering why so few people were taking the survey). I recently changed this feature yesterday and received a ton more workers. "

"Thanks for the information. I was somewhat tricked into using the Master's qualification by mturk this time (it was "strongly suggested" when I created the HIT). I have never relied on it before, and will probably not rely on it in the future. I agree that the fees were a bit exorbitant."

"Thank you for taking time to contact me. This is the first HIT that I have created. I was very disappointed that it had the "Master" qualification. I will make sure the next HITs I create do not have this. I also didn't know about the 30%, that seems unfair. Can you tell me how to reply to workers that have worked on my HIT? Almost all of them were done wrong so far."

"Thank you for that heads up! Normally, my research assistant posts our HITs and this was the first time I did it myself. I didn't realize that Master's was the default. Amazon does a pretty good job of making it tricky to even find where one can change the settings for worker qualifications! The revised HIT is now posted. Many thanks again for the heads-up. This saved me money and--more importantly--has helped me reach my intended worker pool."

"Thanks for the message. I noticed this issue earlier and fixed it. You're right, sending HITs only to "masters" is a waste of time, particularly for market research type stuff."

"Just to keep you informed: You were correct, and the masters qualification was not for us. We are putting a test up one last time, this time with slightly more lax qualifications "

"Thank you very much for your feedback. It seems like Amazon is really pushing people to use Masters workers, and as a result I am getting low adoption on my HITs. When I switched to a normal task with 95% approval rate, I was able to get HITs done quickly and with good results as well."

"Thanks for the message, I haven't used Turk in a while and went with the defaults. I opened it up to non Masters and used the settings you described. You're doing the lord's work there educating people on the extra money Amazon is skimming off the top with the Masters program."

"Thank you very much for the tips! Amazon did not make it clear that it cost more and restricted work. There is even a big scary warning box when you unselect Masters in the qualifications. "

"Thanks for the note. I tried requiring Masters just this once to compare quality to other studies I've done, and I agree, I found non-Masters workers to be just as good as Masters. I also do think it's unfortunate that Amazon awards the Masters qual so arbitrarily. So in the future, I think I'll not require Masters, and just do 98%/5000 qualifications like you suggested."​

 

[clickhappier]

The simplification (from 3 quals to 1, but still obfuscated)


A bunch of people received Masters on 12-17-2015. (STILL not including me, btw. ) We can no longer tell how many total, because of the data-deprival that started the week before.

Amazon said they're now supposedly going to be doing away with the redundant subtypes and only giving out the universal Masters qual instead of all 3 (that was introduced when the Nov 2012 The default change happened, and they'd been giving out all 3 simultaneously to pretty much all recipients ever since).

The email sent out to today's new Masters recipients says:

" Greetings from Mechanical Turk,

Congratulations! You have earned the Masters Qualification. This is a great achievement and reflects your demonstrated excellence in completing Mechanical Turk HITs.

Masters is a special Qualification given to an elite group of Workers who have demonstrated superior performance while completing HITs across the marketplace. Masters must maintain this high level of performance or risk losing this distinction.

Mechanical Turk Masters enjoy these special benefits:
• You will have exclusive access to HITs that require the Masters Qualification.
• You no longer will need to complete CAPTCHAs on the HITs you complete.

Congratulations on earning the Masters Qualification!

The Mechanical Turk Team "​

Spoiler: examples of the previous emails

Log in or register now. to view Spoiler content!

The email they sent out to workers-with-Masters today announcing the qual simplification:

" Greetings from Mechanical Turk,

You are receiving this message because the Categorization Masters or Photo Moderation Masters Qualification is assigned to you. In an effort to increase the amount of work available to the best performing Workers and to provide Requesters with an exceptional Worker community, we have granted the Masters Qualification to all Workers with Photo Moderation Masters or Categorization Masters Qualifications. To simplify the Masters Program, the Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters Qualifications will be retired on January 31, 2016.

You can learn more about these changes on our blog at http://mechanicalturk.typepad.com/blog/2015/12/simplified-masters-qualifications.html .

Please contact us at https://www.mturk.com/mturk/contactus if you have any questions.

The Mechanical Turk Team "​

Contents of the blog post: Simplified Masters Qualifications - The Mechanical Turk Blog - Posted on 12/17/2015 at 11:48

" Simplified Masters Qualifications

The Mechanical Turk Masters Program is designed to give Requesters access to a specialized group of Workers who consistently demonstrate accuracy in performing a wide range of HITs.

Today, we are taking steps to consolidate and simplify the Masters program into a single, unified Qualification. As part of these changes, the Photo Moderation Masters and Categorization Masters Qualifications are being retired. Workers with these Qualifications have been granted the single, unified Masters Qualification.

These changes are intended to increase the amount of work available to Masters Workers and present a simpler experience for Requesters.

Frequently Asked Questions

I publish HITs using the Requester website. What changes do I need to make?

If you are a Requester with a Project that references Photo Moderation Masters or Categorization Masters Qualification Types, we’ve got you covered. We will automatically replace instances of these Qualifications with Masters Qualification Requirements. You do not need to take any action to address these changes.

I publish HITs through the API. What changes do I need to make?

It depends on how you call CreateHIT in your API calls.

• If you call CreateHIT with a HITTypeId that references either of the two Qualification Types being retired, we will send you an updated HITTypeId referencing the Masters Qualification to use in your CreateHIT requests.
• If you call CreateHIT without a HITTypeId and you reference either of the two Qualification Types being retired, you will need to update your QualificationRequirement with the Masters QualificationTypeId the next time you call CreateHIT.

In both cases, you will receive an email by December 18, 2015 containing additional detail.

How are Workers selected for the Masters program?

Masters Workers are selected based on a number of attributes including total assignments submitted, total earnings, tenure, and diversity of work type. If you’re an aspiring Master who’s been focused on a single work type, give a transcription task a shot or spend some time taking a survey.

Please join us in welcoming the Workers who have been granted the Masters qualification today. Congratulations!

For any questions about these changes, Requesters can contact us here and Workers can contact us here. "​

 

[clickhappier]

Masters finally given out again en masse on May 22, 2017, for the first time since Dec 2015. (And I finally was one of the lucky ones!)

@Kadauchi used some special script to retrieve the current number of people who have that qual (since the data is no longer readily visible, also since Dec 2015).

As of around May 2, 2017, he found out there were 22,618 (dating back to the Dec 2015 granting):

And today, May 22, 2017, he found there are now 23,607 - and increase of 989.

I'll update the relevant bits of prior posts some other time, but wanted to get this info up.

Links to some people's 'got it' posts with their stats (still holding true to what I've said about it before):
kadauchi's https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/6cqz3a/it_only_took_16m_hits_to_get_masters/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/6cr0f5/marty_got_masters/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/6cqw6p/i_just_got_the_master_qual_today/
https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/6cr1es/havent_turked_in_over_6_months_here_are_my_stats/
MTC daily thread: http://www.mturkcrowd.com/posts/809201/ and subsequent pages of posts

 

[Tandem In Time]

Recently updated (yet still vague details) about the Masters Qualification

What is a Mechanical Turk Master Worker?

A Master Worker is a top Worker of the MTurk marketplace that has been granted the Mechanical Turk Masters Qualification. These Workers have consistently demonstrated a high degree of success in performing a wide range of HITs across a large number of Requesters. We leverage statistical models that analyze all Workers based on several Requester-provided and marketplace data points to make that determination. Some of the key categories of data that are considered to be granted and maintain the Masters Qualification include the Worker's ability to consistently submit high-quality results (as indicated by Requester approval rates and other related factors), marketplace tenure, and variety of work performed. Master Workers have access to work that requires a Masters Qualification.

How do I receive the Masters Qualification?

Mechanical Turk automatically grants the Masters Qualification based on statistical models that analyze Worker performance based on several Requester-provided and marketplace data points. Those who score the highest across these key data points are granted the Masters Qualification. Workers cannot apply for this status. To receive the Masters Qualification, try tasks across a variety of Requesters and consistently submit a lot of high quality work.

Can the Masters Qualification be revoked?

Yes, the Masters Qualification can be revoked if the Worker's performance declines and he or she no longer scores highest across Requester-provided and marketplace data points, or the Worker otherwise violates our Participation Agreement. If Workers have the Masters Qualification revoked, they will have an opportunity to improve and will be eligible to regain the Masters Qualification in the future.