What is Mechanical Turk?

Mechanical Turk is a site where requesters can put up tasks with a set price—usually pennies to a dollar—and find workers who will do those tasks. Some do AMT for fun and many enjoy it as work. However, many use it to make ends meet when they have few other choices.

Testimonials from Turkers

"How do you make ends meet on a dollar an hour? You don't. All you do is add to what you make with your regular job and hope it is enough to make a difference."

"I realize I have a choice to work or not work on AMT, but that means I would also need to make the choice to eat or not eat, pay bills or not pay bills, etc."

We're watching out for the crowd in crowdsourcing because nobody else seems to be.

Almost half of the Mechanical Turk workers who wrote their Bill of Rights demanded protection from employers who take their work without paying.

Turkopticon lets you REPORT and AVOID shady employers.

snoogiebug from turkernation says, "if you do not have this please get it!!!! it does work and is worth it !!"

How Turkopticon works:

Turkopticon adds functionality to Amazon Mechanical Turk as you browse for HITs and review status of work you've done. As you browse HITs, Turkopticon places a button next to each requester and highlights requesters for whom there are reviews from other workers. Bad reviews let you avoid shady employers and good reviews help you find fair ones. You can view reports made against requesters with a quick click.

As you review HITs you've completed, are there HITs you weren't fairly paid for? Turkopticon adds a button that lets you review requesters from your "Status Detail" page.

Other Turking resources:

• Turker Nation
• MTurk Forum
• Hide requester script (old link to script is broken, new link here)