I think it is an activity scoring system. MTurk website can see almost everything we do. They can track what tasks we view, work, skip, return, and submit. They can also see what requesters we email(contact forms) and if it is about a specific hit or hit group. So having recently been granted masters a little bit after changing my habits due to productrnr kicking me from adult content review hits, I have a theory. It isn't about submitting huge amount of hits. That I'm sure of. My theory: It is about sampling and possibly viewing a large variety of hits, submitting a regular large number of hits that need not be huge amount or large variety, and regularly communicating with the requester such as giving feedback, reporting issues, and asking questions. After all these are all behaviors that companies would like to see in employees in any workplace.
I will just add that is not related to the number of HITs. I have 270,029 with a 100% rating (some rejects but Amazon averages it up). I don't have masters. I think it's because I primarily do HITs for only one requester.
The development of the algorithm that Amazon uses to determine who receives the masters qualification was, in fact, crowd sourced out to turkers themselves. However, when the task was posted, the only qualification required to accept the HIT was- HIT approval rate (%) is greater than 0, resulting in many sub-par submissions. Jeff Bezos made the executive decision to let turkers lie in the bed they had made for themselves, and implemented said algorithm. Upon doing so, the algorithm itself grew out of Amazon's control and became something comparable to an infinite improbability drive, granting masters qualifications to random turkers at random times. /tldr: IDK.
So I went and did a search for HITs that required Masters qualifications, found one HIT for each type of qual (Masters, Photo Categorization Masters and Categorization Masters) and bookmarked the links to request them. I put them all in a folder in my Bookmarks Bar, and when I'm bored or between batches, I right-click on them and open them all in a new window. I'm doing this on the theory, posted yesterday (sorry, I forgot who) that Amazon grants Masters qual to whoever's at the top of the request queue. It's not having X number of HITs, or a certain percentage in Returns or Approvals, or any of that. It's just a matter of being on the top of the list when the employee at Amazon goes to look at who's getting Masters that day. Considering who on the board gets it and who still hasn't gotten it (sorry, Zingy), this theory makes as much sense as any. The process is a black box and we're trying to suss out the inner workings.
For what it's worth, I never requested any Masters qualifications before I received mine. That's not to say that their algorithm isn't evolving over time, as phoolishness postulated.
So, it's kind of like the lottery. If your not in, you don't win. Well I better apply for it then. I have never applied for it because I thought I would not qualify. My hits are at 15524 99.7% ... Rejected 47 0.3% ... Pending 44 — I figured they only take turkers with 99%+, and at least 40k hits. But I will apply and you never know.
Well I posted in this thread and then Friday I surprisingly became a Master! So clearly the secret is posting in this thread.
To get Masters, you must bring back the Lost Crown of Dreams to Olmec. To do so, you must go on a Temple Run - and here is how you may choose to do it. First, you may want to go into the Pit of Dispair and find the right activation button that will open the door to the Chamber of Secret Scrolls. Blah blah blah - Temple Guards blah blah blah - Get lost along the way... Blah Blah Blah The Choices are YOURS and Yours ALONE! Go forward Green Monkeys!