Article on Mturk rejections and scams

tfeathers

New Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
3
Reaction score
1
Points
3
Age
32
Hey folks,

My name is Todd Feathers, I'm a freelance tech reporter. You can find my work here.

I'm currently working on an article about rejections/scams on MTurk and similar crowdsourcing websites. I'm trying to get an idea of how big a problem this is for turkers: Is it an occasional annoyance, or does it really cut in to your income? Are there requestors notorious for scamming? Does MTurk do a decent job of policing for scams? I'd love to talk to some experienced turkers, either on the phone or by email if you prefer. Any opinions/thoughts are much appreciated, and I'm happy to talk on background.

Thanks a bunch for the help! Best way to contact me is messaging me through this site or email at tfeathers@protonmail.com
 

C to the J

Outlaw Turker
Contributor
Master Pleaser
Crowd Pleaser
HIT Poster
Joined
Jan 12, 2016
Messages
52,712
Reaction score
163,248
Points
3,238
Age
36
Gender
Male
Hey folks,

My name is Todd Feathers, I'm a freelance tech reporter. You can find my work here.

I'm currently working on an article about rejections/scams on MTurk and similar crowdsourcing websites. I'm trying to get an idea of how big a problem this is for turkers: Is it an occasional annoyance, or does it really cut in to your income? Are there requestors notorious for scamming? Does MTurk do a decent job of policing for scams? I'd love to talk to some experienced turkers, either on the phone or by email if you prefer. Any opinions/thoughts are much appreciated, and I'm happy to talk on background.

Thanks a bunch for the help! Best way to contact me is messaging me through this site or email at tfeathers@protonmail.com
It's something that really isn't much of an issue these days. Us having access to requester's approval rating along with requester review websites like Turkerview have helped a ton with avoiding rejection happy requesters.

Of course when someone does try to screw us over turkers will in turn try to ruin that person's life.
We had someone try to mass reject all of us for probably about $10,000 in HITs a few days before Christmas last year and turkers then messaged every single person working for their company to give them their thoughts on that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: savvy

tfeathers

New Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
3
Reaction score
1
Points
3
Age
32
It's something that really isn't much of an issue these days. Us having access to requester's approval rating along with requester review websites like Turkerview have helped a ton with avoiding rejection happy requesters.

Of course when someone does try to screw us over turkers will in turn try to ruin that person's life.
We had someone try to mass reject all of us for probably about $10,000 in HITs a few days before Christmas last year and turkers then messaged every single person working for their company to give them their thoughts on that.
Thank you! I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I hadn't really considered that a mass rejection would trigger that kind of response. Just out of curiosity, do you know the requestors name in the incident you mentioned? Or is there a forum/thread I should check out to read up on it?

Really appreciate it!
 
  • Like
Reactions: C to the J

C to the J

Outlaw Turker
Contributor
Master Pleaser
Crowd Pleaser
HIT Poster
Joined
Jan 12, 2016
Messages
52,712
Reaction score
163,248
Points
3,238
Age
36
Gender
Male
Thank you! I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I hadn't really considered that a mass rejection would trigger that kind of response. Just out of curiosity, do you know the requestors name in the incident you mentioned? Or is there a forum/thread I should check out to read up on it?

Really appreciate it!
Not off the top of my head, no.

They did end up reversing all the rejections and apologizing though.
 

A6_Foul_Out

I only use Organic TurkerView reviews
Contributor
HIT Poster
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
11,754
Reaction score
21,657
Points
1,538
Location
CT's Attic
Gender
Male
rejections/scams on MTurk and similar crowdsourcing websites. I'm trying to get an idea of how big a problem this is for turkers: Is it an occasional annoyance, or does it really cut in to your income?
task selection plays a large part as well.

The odds of rejection on work completed in good faith from work that paid well, used appropriate qualifications and had good instructions/task design is practically 0.

Competent workers don't work on tasks where the above doesn't apply.

If a worker chooses to work on:
work where the origin of the req can't be verified/found/understood
underpaid garbage,
or work where the instructions aren't clear,
or work clearly intended to be completed by Native speaking English workers, but that work isn't limited to American workers... etc.

This type of work is highly susceptible to being rejected. If they don't care enough to run their project properly, why would they give any mind to if they are willing to pay you or not.

It takes a competent full-time worker all of about 10-30 seconds at most to determine if it is worth looking more in depth at a task.