HELLO! Happy October everyone! This is an update to the Trick or Treat hits. Please read, or at least scroll down for the technical details at the end.
As you may have heard (or may not if you live under a rock), I will be doing my Trick or Treat hits again this year. Why? Because last year was awesome and I want to do it again, don't judge me.
For those who have never participated, I've spoilered a description below, with screenshots, because everyone got confused and I want to nip it in the bud now.
For those who DO know, hopefully you've accepted my qual by now. If not, please do so by going
HERE to take the qual test. HOWEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since I'm doing a bulk thing, PLEASE DO NOT USE YOUR USERNAME! I'm going to be making a script that will check for the password:
36b669382b02cb0473f0517bcf60d9f8
Use this in the qual test, and
only this, no other characters. People keep putting return characters in, that breaks my scripts and I have to go in and fix it manually. Please just put that string in, in its entirety, and nothing else.
I've had people express their concern that I'm only active during work hours, and some people can't participate then, so I'll do my best to accomodate. But I can't be doing one-offs at 2am, I sleep, sorry.
Because of this, I'm going to run the first batch tomorrow after work hours. Not sure when, but I'll be in class starting at 6:30 EST, so it'll be sometime after that most likely. I'll be posting in all the forums and IRC, so make sure you have your requester ID searches running!
this *should* be the panda, but I can't guarantee it.
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
Because this is a controversial hit (it might not seem like it but people get bitter), I've decided to do a few things differently this year. Namely, I'm going to try to schedule at least a little bit more, give y'all some heads up, and to prevent people from winning every time.
This hit is a luck-based hit. I create a random number that is one of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. If the number is 1,2,3,4,5, the hit will *return* (REA
NOT REJECT) itself, someone else can accept that hit. If the number is 6,7,8,9,10, the hit will submit, and WILL approve in 1 minute.
PLEASE LOOK
HERE TO SEE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE WHEN YOUR HIT IS RETURNED! I got 800 people asking me about that every day. You will see an "Invalid URL Parameters" error. This means your hit was returned, and you DID NOT WIN. If your hit submitted, you see the normal "Your hit has been submitted to Tjololo for approval" thing.
IF YOUR HIT WAS SUBMITTE
Enjoy your dime. After all the hits have submitted, but before the next hit is live, I will be granting you a qual that will exclude you from accepting a hit in the next batch. After that batch is done, your qual will be removed, and you will be eligible for the NEXT batch. In other words, you can only win once per week.
THE FINAL BATCH: I haven't figured that one out, but it's going to be larger. I've had people offer to pay to make it even BIGGER, and I'll see if that's the direction I want to go. As of right now, I have enough personal funds to make the last batch almost the same size as the whole previous month, so it'll be larger and pay better, though how much of each I'm not sure. I'll have to fiddle with the numbers and mturk's fees. I will only be doing ONE final batch, so if you don't win, sorry. It will definitely happen on 10/31. Not sure of the time though. Maybe I'll do a few smaller batches throughout the day, I don't know. I'll figure it out.
CHEATING:
Cheating isn't cool. I've taken lengths to prevent it, but people still try. Last year I had 3 cheaters. If you cheat, I *will* know about it, you'll get my cheater qual. This qual will be set as "not assigned" for every hit I plan to do, and you will be ineligible forever, so don't cheat. What do I mean by cheating? Trying to force submit, or circumvent the random number, or doing any fancy nonsense to give yourself an edge. If you're that desparate for a dime, I'll give you free access to my couch, take whatever change you want, don't ruin it for everyone else. Seriously, it's not cool. If I had thought about it last year I would have hard blocked the cheaters, but this year instead I'm just going to prevent you from ever working on my hits again.