I did a hit for someone three days ago and got paid the $.40 for the 5 minute survey. Today I get an email from mturk saying that I had been blocked by this requester and that I could get suspended. This is the only job I ever did for this requester and I have an approval % of 98 overall. I have only been on mturk for a month, so I'm somewhat new - so what do I do (and what did I do?) Any insights are appreciated.
The requester might not understand that he can block you from doing any more of his hits without issuing the sort of 'hard block' that can get you suspended. If I were you, I'd contact the requester, explain what happened, ask him to rescind it, and cross my fingers.
The survey requesters block workers to prevent production of duplicate work.The requester u mentioned wud not be aware of the type of consequences that a hard block can cause to a worker. I think its better u politely contact the requester, tell him bout the issue and its seriousness and request him to remove the block and make it a soft block whch wudnt affect u in any way.Or else he/she could also remove the hard block after a couple of days incase he knows hw damaging a block cud be to a worker... It wud be nice if u posted the updates about it here...including your communications with the requester so tht it help others...thank you
this is exactly what i came looking for the forums for its stupid, because in Amazons eyes, the ones blocked look like they are doing poor quality work are we able to complain if he doesn't answer a polite email?
Amazon USED to suspend people all willy nilly for these sorts of blocks, but I think that's extremely rare now. Amazon now knows that a lot of requesters use blocks for these reasons and take that into account before suspending people. So I wouldn't worry about it.
All that Amazon would tell u is this...Hope that answers your query..Yess i'd say helpless is the word unless requesters care and are ready to help us. Below was the mail i recvd frm mturk regarding my enquiry on this Uploaded with ImageShack.us
yep...Seems amazon and the mturk team is being a bit lenient in their policies of firing workers as we cud hear news of lifting the supension on some account after their review process.So its like they might take you back incase your account is in a good standing !!
And now for the rest of the story... Thank you for all of your replies. I sent the requester an email (not totally sweet, but not too harsh either) and he responded very promptly. As someone suggested, he had wanted to repost the survey I took and blocked everyone who had taken it before. Since my email, he has unblocked everyone and is in contact with lord master (Mturk) on a better way for him to procede. Very cool. Thanks everyone, this truly is a great forum.
I'm almost 10000% sure you're talking about David Broockman. I got blocked from him too, it's only temporary but still pisses me the hell off and I won't be doing any of his surveys any more.
you are exactly right Aranda and he did reply right away and said he was reversing it all but yeah, i wont do any of his anymore
Hes over at TO begging people to reverse their ratings. By what hes posting its pretty clear that he screwed up and gave everyone the wrong block. He really doesn't understand how MTurk works and I think hes realizing that he has officially screwed up his chances of getting a big sample for his future research. I wont do anymore of his hits and if you value your account you wont either those kind of screw-ups can get your account banned.
A couple of days ago I did a survey for David Broockman and it was rejected. His explanation was that, "You did not answer the attention check question correctly, indicating you did not read the direcitons carefully." I remember the question and I'm 100% certain that I answered it exactly how it said. Has anyone else been rejected for this reason?