Hi, I joined mTurk a few days ago, but have yet to complete a HIT. I want to use it to write articles for people, but am blocked by this qualification business. I have sent requests but have not gotten any response. Can someone please explain how it works? Thanks
Hey Calculator! It depends on the HIT - there are a few different kinds of qualifications the requester might be looking for (some you can just request and receive, and the rest, though they may have a "request" button, are really things that you earn). The first type has to do with how many accepted vs. rejected HITs you have completed. This is a percentage that you want to keep as high as possible, but aim for at least 95% acceptance rate. You can increase your chances of being accepted by both doing good work and avoiding scammers (Turkopticon is a great tool to avoid the bad requesters - http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/). The second type has to do with how many HITs you have done that have also been accepted. With no accepted HITs, yet, you will be blocked out of a lot of the writing and transcription work on MTurk. The first major milestone is 1000 accepted HITs, but even just having a few (1-100ish) open up more HITs, especially writing HITs, to you. The third type involves tests that you take to prove that your command of the English language (or whatever) is good. These tests typically just require you to fill in blanks from a multiple-choice list that has one correct answer and three commonly made mistakes. The fourth type, and I'm not sure if this applies to writing HITs, but it does apply to the bulk categorization HITs and whatnot, is a "Master Qualification," which basically means you maintain a very high acceptance rate while doing a particular type of HIT over a long period of time. There are also a few requesters who put trial HITs out, usually asking you to summarize news articles for $0.20 - $1.00. If you submit enough of excellent work to them, they'll start offering you higher paid "original writing" HITs. You can check the qualifications required for any given HIT by clicking on the HIT title (or the "View a HIT in this Group" link on the opposite side, if you are allowed to click on it). I hope this helps! Don't get too discouraged. There are a lot of threads on here about requesters that are good for getting your accepted HIT count up (provided that you do a good job, of course - even Oscar Smith occasionally rejects!). EDIT: I forgot to add - head on over to the Scripts forum for more great stuff - http://mturkforum.com/forumdisplay.php?9-Scripts
Hello nobody, thanks I am still struggling with this though; I just completed a HIT for a personality test, which had no way to submit it, and the time ran out, so now it has gone down as abandoned. I feel as though it is a sham.
If you're ever in that situation again, Return the hit. That doesn't really count against you -- minus being out the time and the potential money.
Hi the_calculator! I welcome you to turking and wish you the best. Make sure you use turkopicon so you know which requesters to avoid. I wish I knew that when I first started. Would have saved me a few rejections. I am very new to this forum and have only been turking full time since march or so. I advise you ask before doing there seems to be alot of knowledge on this forum. =)