FAQ

• What are the requester "attributes"?

  The "attributes" used to describe requesters answer the following questions:
  • communicativity: How responsive has this requester been to communications or concerns you have raised?
  • generosity: How well has this requester paid for the amount of time their HITs take?
  • fairness: How fair has this requester been in approving or rejecting your work?
  • promptness: How promptly has this requester approved your work and paid?
  A score of "0" means we have no data for that attribute

• What are appropriate uses of flags and comments?

  Flags should be used to mark reviews in violation of community rules or that seem to be written by someone who didn't actually do the work (e.g. a requester, a spammer). We will be using flags in the near future to moderate reviews so only flag if you really believe a review was made in bad faith. Comments can be used to debate the finer points, such as whether a review is justified, whether a requester violates terms of service.

• What are the community rules?

  As the number of contributors posting grows, we've found the need to have policies to ensure quality and civility. See our community rules and policies page

• Why are you doing this?

  Because we're people who feel like the Amazon Mechanical Turk requesters are really, really excited because they get such good work for so little money while the workers are left to look out for themselves. We believe employers should be held accountable to the people who work hard for them.

• Does Turkopticon collect any personalized data about me?

  No - we do not collect any personalized data. However, in version 2, we have started to collect anonymous data in order to calculate statistics that help make Turkopticon better for you. For example, in the near future, we plan on posting statistics about HITs and requesters - like wages and rejection rates - to help you choose the best jobs. You can opt out using the "Turkopticon Settings" settings at "https://www.mturk.com/mturk/tukopticonsettings". Not that, in the interest of fairness to other Turkers, you will not be able to see statistics about jobs if you choose to not contribute data yourself.

• How do I know the requester wasn't reported by mistake?

  Right now, it is honor system. But it's pretty hard to accidentally report someone as it requires going to a new site and explaining the report in a comment.

• How do I know the requester wasn't reported fraudulently?

  It's up to you to judge. If a report seems shady to you -- perhaps the person has reported many requesters with the same exact comment -- you can flag the report. When judging the credibility of a report, you can take flags and comments into account.

• Is there a way for requesters to clear their names?

  We don't have a way of removing reports but if requesters feel that a report is dishonest or a misunderstanding, they can create an account on Turkopticon, flag the report they wish to contest, and explain why in the comments.

  Will you support other browsers or versions of Firefox?

  We've only tested Turkopticon with Firefox 3.0. Let us know if it works with other versions. We probably will not develop IE support because we've heard that over 70% of Turk workers user Firefox. Since we're volunteers, we want to put our limited time and effort where it counts.

• Who has contributed to this effort? Who gets a shout out?

  Thanks to all the AMT workers who filled out our Turkers' Bill of Rights survey that told us people needed something like this. Thanks to Dolores Labs for suggesting how we could collect initial reviews and their enthusiasm for making AMT more fair and honest for Turkers. Dahn Tamir of techlist has also offered some logistical and code maintenance support.

• How can I support this effort?

  We incur direct costs for running this in paying for hosting for the service. We do not get financially compensated for the time we put into this. If you would like to donate to financially support operating costs of Turkopticon, please email us at turkopticon@differenceengines.com

Bug Reports, Known Issues, & Planned Features

• Please see the issue tracking page for current known bugs and issues. To submit a bug report or feature request not listed there, please click the "Feedback" button on the right side of this website to post to our GetSatisfaction forum. If you'd prefer, email us at turkopticon@differenceengines.com.