How to Contact Requesters on Mechanical Turk

electrolyte · Jan 1, 2000

Updated information for the new Worker website, effective December 15, 2017

(The posts below this one are now outdated and do not work on the current Worker website.)

NOTICE: MTurk has again changed some of the coding of the website to make some of these methods not work correctly. We'll update this post as we have more information but for now, some of these methods may not be working.

To contact a requester you have submitted a HIT for in the last 45 days
Go to your Dashboard. Click on the date you did the HIT. On the far right is a link that says "Contact Requester".

To contact a requester who has a HIT currently posted
On the HIT page, click on "HIT Details" in the top left corner. A pop up will appear with a link at the bottom that says "Contact This Requester".

To contact a requester after you've accepted a HIT, but before you've submitted it
Click "HIT Details" in the top left corner of the HIT page and click "Contact This Requester".

To contact requesters using MTurkSuite
Install MTurkSuite (Firefox or Chrome). Right click on a requester's name and select "Contact Requester" from the menu.

To contact requesters when you know their Requester ID
Use this URL, and paste the Requester's ID at the end, after the equal sign:

Code:

https://worker.mturk.com/contact_requester/hit_type_messages/new?hit_type_message%5Bhit_type_id%5D=YOURMTURKHIT&hit_type_message%5Brequester_id%5D=

Important!
If you use one of these methods and receive an error after sending your message that says "Strange... something is not right. The provided website address is not valid. Below are all HITs available.", that is an expected error and is fine. Your message has been sent. Details from

@Kadauchi: "This error is only saying that the group id is wrong, not that the message has failed to send. The error happens because of the method used to contact the requester. MTurk requires a group id to send a message to a requester with this method, so a fake one has been used YOURMTURKHIT. When you send a message, MTurk will redirect you back to hit group that you contacted the requester from. Since MTurk Suite is using a fake group id, it fails and displays this error. Changing that message is planned eventually, but its a improve an mturk thing not a fix a broken thing."

Jaded · Jan 10, 2016

Contacting Any Requester:

If you find yourself needing to contact a requester that you haven’t worked for here is how to do it.

Code:

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/contact?subject=Regarding+Amazon+Mechanical+Turk+HIT&requesterId=<RequsterID>

Say we wanted to contact Mr. Zing. We need his requester ID first, which you can get out of the address bar once you click his requester name (or you can find it on Turkopticon, or searching the forum if the hit was posted.) Once you have the requester ID just plug it into the link and you're ready to go.

We would change the example link above to:

Code:

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/contact?subject=Regarding+Amazon+Mechanical+Turk+HIT&requesterId=AGVV5AWLJY7H2

clickhappier · Jan 19, 2016

Be aware that when you choose to send a message to a requester through the MTurk messaging system, the requester will see your email address (to reply to it), your MTurk account's display name (which for most people is your full first and last name), and your worker ID. So you probably don't want to send messages to scammy requesters who might use that to spam you.

Any message sent through the requester contact form isn't saved anywhere unless you save it yourself. I paste mine into a spreadsheet, with the date and which requester I sent it to, and keep track of when/if they reply (it's about 50-50 overall).

How to find requester IDs: In addition to searching for the requester on Turkopticon, HITs posted on the forums with MTurk Great HIT Export are also a good place to find a requester's ID.

Another way to get 'contact requester' links is to use this userscript that makes them appear on requesters' Turkopticon pages automatically. mmmturkeybacon Add Contact Link To Turkopticon

And with my script CH Requester Results Refinements, you can have contact links appear on all requester results pages on MTurk too, even ones with no results currently found.

Cristo's script Mturk Unqualified Contact adds contact links to the details of HITs you aren't qualified for on search results pages.

Note that (unless you're also using my script CH MTurk Page Titles that improves this some) you will see

Contact Requester ""

at the top of the contact form page when you use a contact link that doesn't have the requester name embedded into it in addition to the ID; Amazon's programming isn't smart enough to fill in their name if you aren't handing the name to it in the link. This is normal, and as long as you used a valid requester ID and didn't otherwise mangle the link, the message will send successfully.

If you use an invalid contact URL (with some kind of mistake in the wrong place), you'll get an error saying "Failed to send comments. We're sorry. There was a problem sending your comments. Please try again later." And a few times their contact system has had a brief malfunction and refused to send from valid links that work fine when you come back later and retry.

If you try to send a message to a requester whose account has been suspended by Amazon for ToS violations (it does happen, just not as often/visibly as we might like), using a contact URL you're sure is valid, you'll get an error saying "We're sorry, but this Requester could not be reached".

PS: As most people are already aware of, but for completion's sake: in many cases, you can contact requesters from MTurk's built-in contact links.

@Framework43 made a gif in April 2015 illustrating how to get to one of the places MTurk provides a built-in 'contact requester' link, for when a HIT you qualify for from that requester is still available:

Another place built-in contact links are provided is from the requesters' names on your daily status lists of HITs you've completed.

How to Contact Requesters on Mechanical Turk

electrolyte

The Ghost of MTurk Past

Jaded

The real themildone

clickhappier

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