06/22 - Techie Thursday!

[jan]

We wanted to make sure that we're getting good quality responses, and thought this would help. Do you think it's not the right thing to do?

Masters is sort of a lottery. I say this with several hundred thousand hits, having 100% acceptance rate - and being on mturk for several years. And no masters.

They have a minimum standard for masters (three thousand hits is usually it) - but after that, it seems to be a lottery (we've seen people who have had their account suspended get masters).
That said, and my personal feelings aside.............often people with masters are not 'new' and that helps (so it's not a bad thing).

However, for batch work, the best way to set up a HIT is to set it up with a qualification test (not masters). That way you can control it -- to get what y ou want.

 

[weakman]

Rental api seems pretty tough to pass.

 

[Jaded]

We wanted to make sure that we're getting good quality responses, and thought this would help. Do you think it's not the right thing to do?

A better way might be X approved hits and X approval rate (ex: 10k approved, 98 or higher approval rate) I just got up so I don't know what the hits are yet, but a qual test could be a good way to do it too.

 

[Kuddish]

2 minutes:

Title: Complete this survey about your beliefs, opinions, and preferences | PANDA Requester: Jessica Lasky-Fink [A1KRXW3OISUI49] (TO) TO Ratings: 3.80 Communicativity 4.09 Generosity 4.89 Fairness 4.97 Promptness Number of Reviews: 61 (Submit a new TO rating for this requester) Description: Complete this survey about your beliefs, opinions, and preferences Time: 60 minutes Hits Available: 278 Reward: $1.00 Qualifications: Total approved HITs is not less than 1000; HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 95; Location is US

Need more of these.

 

[Kerek]

Masters are in general better workers than non-masters. This is just less true when you limit the consideration to the people with enough dedication and agency to use the forum.

 

[Jaded]

They know you can't quit when you're over half way done and might as well finish.

Yes you can. No one is tying you to the chair and making you finish. And finishing when it's low paid just lets the requester know their work is gonna get done anyway.

 

[Zacharias]

Hi folks,

I hope this is the right place to post. I just wanted to let people know about some HITs we're trying to get done on MT. The requester name is "Robert Biggs" and the titles are:

Identification of Bribery or Corruption from News Reports
Identification of Corporate Issues from News Reports
Identification of Financial Crime from News Reports
Identification of Serious Crime from News Reports
Identification of Source of Wealth from News Reports
Identification of Terrorism or Funding of Terrorism from News Reports
Identification of Ultimate Beneficial Owner from News Reports

We're looking for people to read a short news report and then select the people/organisations (if any) who have been involved in some activity, according to the report (I wanted to link to the tasks, but not sure how to do that). We're looking for Master-qualified turkers currently. One of the tasks has 80% completion currently, and the current average time taken on that task is 35 seconds (other tasks should be similar). Each HIT is worth $0.10.

Any questions, please let me know. Also, if anyone has any advice on improving the HITs, I'd welcome any advice, we're pretty new to this.

Thanks,

Dean.

Hi Dean,

Thanks for posting about your tasks here and looking for feedback. I did see these tasks available the other day but just eyeballing them let me know it would take too long do do each task for me to make it worth it. I just previewed another hit to give you some feedback and it looks like the article is roughly 630 words which takes around 3 minutes for an average person to read (according to some google-fu). On top of that, there is the selection time which may be where you get the 35 second average? However, that would make this HIT pay $.10 for 3.5 minutes of work. That's $1.71 per hour.

As @bxpretzel said, this isn't really worth it to those of us that would put in a full effort on the tasks.

 

[themildone]

"I do not want to donate part of my earnings "
wow requester way to make me feel like an asshole over .10

 

[weakman]

Yes you can. No one is tying you to the chair and making you finish. And finishing when it's low paid just lets the requester know their work is gonna get done anyway.

True, but it is hard because sometimes when the pay is 2 dollars or so you don't want to walk away with nothing after spending a lot of time. I do leave a bad review. I wish that amazon had a review system because that way we know the requesters are seeing the reviews.

 

[sofaslug]

Need more of these.

Yeah, 40 or so of these a day and I'd be happy.

 

[Kerek]

Yes you can. No one is tying you to the chair and making you finish. And finishing when it's low paid just lets the requester know their work is gonna get done anyway.

Maybe you should be tied to the chair and forced to work.

 

[Jaded]

Maybe you should be tied to the chair and forced to work.

I'm working right now.

edit: But that's probably true.

 

[weakman]

I understand why requesters use masters. Its the easy way to get good workers. Too many bad regular workers ruin everything for everybody.

 

[ctraltDel]

@Squatty - If I contact VacationRental through mturk's form is that sufficient to get a response? (edit - got a response so consider this a hi/good morning squatty instead )

 

[unfortuNate]

Good morning!

 

[themildone]

I understand why requesters use masters. Its the easy way to get good workers. Too many bad regular workers ruin everything for everybody.

but bad workers can be assigned masters because it's apparently random...

 

[weakman]

but bad workers can be assigned masters because it's apparently random...

Generally most masters are great workers and you can get your masters revoke if too many requesters complain about you.

 

[Jaded]

Title: Please read about an organizational situation and answer some questions. | PANDA Worker: Preview | Accept | Requester Requester: Brian Gunia [A24NZEQTNJCVZF] (Contact) TO 1: [Pay: 4.50] [Fast: 4.54] [Comm: 3.75] [Fair: 4.41] [Reviews: 32] [ToS: 0] TO 2: [Rate: $6.43/hr] [Pen: -- days] [Res: -- of 0] [Rec: 100% of 1] [Rej: 0] [ToS: 0] [Brk: 0] Description: This is a short survey that will take less than 5 minutes. Time: 2 hours HITs Available: 1 Reward: $0.50 Qualifications: HIT approval rate (%) is not less than 90; Location is US;

HIT exported from Mturk Suite v1.21.10​

 

[Jaded]

Title: Record Yourself Speaking a Few Short English Phrases | PANDA Worker: Preview | Accept | Requester Requester: Voice Innovations LLC [A3FY13FRRIB53Z] (Contact) TO 1: Not Available TO 2: Not Available Description: Go to our web site and record yourself speaking some short English phrases that show on the screen. Usually takes around 10-15 min. Time: 30 minutes HITs Available: 1 Reward: $1.00 Qualifications: Total approved HITs is not less than 100; HIT approval rate (%) is greater than 80; Location is US;

HIT exported from Mturk Suite v1.21.10​

 

[sofaslug]

Yes you can. No one is tying you to the chair and making you finish. And finishing when it's low paid just lets the requester know their work is gonna get done anyway.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. No one wants to work for shit pay but we all have been balls deep in a job and not wanted to lose the money from it after investing so much effort. If it's a low amount I cut and run but if I'm an hour into a $5 job then I'm likely sticking it out. When this happens I not only light up their TO but I contact the requester to let them know that their pay rate sucked. About 25% of the time the requester writes back in a positive way and changes their pay or survey to make it more fair. It's a continuing education for workers and requesters because many have never worked on a platform like this and have no ethical guidelines to what workers feel they should make. A lot of requesters are under the impression that we are a bunch of enthusiasts who just do surveys for shits and giggles and really don't care about the pay.