Rep Present Requester account suspension?

Regina Specter

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Hello,

I am a new requester on MTurk. I am an academic researcher and would like to use AMT for a research project. After posting my HIT I received an email from AMT telling me that my HIT has been automatically expired because workers reported it as having issues. I have read through all the guidelines, best practice, AMT t&c before posting to make sure I comply with everything and am fair to the workers, so I really have no idea what is the issue with my HIT :(

My question is, is there a risk my account will be suspended? How many warnings from AMT do I receive before my account is suspended? Does anyone have any experience with this? I have written to their help team to ask for advice on how to fix my HIT but just wanted to know if you guys have any experience with this.

Thank you so much for your help!
 
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jan

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Hello,

I am a new requester on MTurk. I am an academic researcher and would like to use AMT for a research project. After posting my HIT I received an email from AMT telling me that my HIT has been automatically expired because workers reported it as having issues. I have read through all the guidelines, best practice, AMT t&c before posting to make sure I comply with everything and am fair to the workers, so I really have no idea what is the issue with my HIT :(

My question is, is there a risk my account will be suspended? How many warnings from AMT do I receive before my account is suspended? Does anyone have any experience with this? I have written to their help team to ask for advice on how to fix my HIT but just wanted to know if you guys have any experience with this.

Thank you so much for your help!
I just checked TO (Turkopticon) and didn't see a review. You should check there under the name that you posted under. Not everything is reviewed - but if it violated TOS - it might have been.

The thing that would get flagged by us and AMT is usually giving out identifying information. Did you ask for our names, specific information? Or to sign in at another website? Those kinds of things get flagged quickly by us. I don't know if they will suspend your account - I only know about things from this side of the fence :). I suspect that if it was just a mistake, you can email AMT and resolve it. TBH, they want requesters - you make them money :). So, they will want to work it out.
 

Regina Specter

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I just checked TO (Turkopticon) and didn't see a review. You should check there under the name that you posted under. Not everything is reviewed - but if it violated TOS - it might have been.

The thing that would get flagged by us and AMT is usually giving out identifying information. Did you ask for our names, specific information? Or to sign in at another website? Those kinds of things get flagged quickly by us. I don't know if they will suspend your account - I only know about things from this side of the fence :). I suspect that if it was just a mistake, you can email AMT and resolve it. TBH, they want requesters - you make them money :). So, they will want to work it out.
Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I requested that only workers that are existing Reddit users can take part, but was careful to not ask workers to register on Reddit. If I understood correctly AMT doesn't allow HITs that require workers to register on other websites, but I do need my workers to be Reddit users. I thought to get around it I would ask workers who are already existing Reddit users, but this might have been the issue :( I also thought Reddit username wouldn't be identifying...
 
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Evergreen Queen

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Thank you so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it. I requested that only workers that are existing Reddit users can take part, but was careful to not ask workers to register on Reddit. If I understood correctly AMT doesn't allow HITs that require workers to register on other websites, but I do need my workers to be Reddit users. I thought to get around it I would ask workers who are already existing Reddit users, but this might have been the issue :( I also thought Reddit username wouldn't be identifying...
I suspect that might be the reason. The thing about giving a requester our reddit name is that many people use the mturk subreddit. So if I give the requester my username, they would essentially be able to link all my posts (including ones specifically about mturk) to my ID.

Some people wouldn't have a problem with that, but I can see why some would. I don't see Amazon suspending your account over that, especially if you explain the situation. Like jan @jan said, they want you guys here. I'm sure it can be worked out. :)
 

electrolyte

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Are you sure it was a TOS issue? Workers can also report HITs that aren't working properly or appear to have parts broken. Maybe your HIT had some kind of problem that led workers to report that part of it was broken and that's what your notification from Amazon was about?

If you haven't already, I'd contact MTurk and ask for clarification. You can't fix a problem if you don't know what's broken.